[Speaker 1] (0:00 – 2:36)
Hello, this is Anna Kennedy and we’re talking all things autism. We’re live this week and we’re in Covent Garden and it’s wet, wet, wet. It’s been raining all day, but hey ho, we’ve got lots to talk about today.

So I am just back from the County of Cork. And what a great time we had. I was there giving a talk on performing arts and autism’s got talent.

My husband Sean was talking about reasonable adjustments and Daniel Docherty, one of my ambassadors, a new ambassador for Ireland. He was talking about his experience on autism’s got talent and gave it a wow factor performance and sang Nissoon Doma. Five hundred people stood up and gave him a standing ovation.

It just went on and on. And I was so proud of him and I could see his mum and dad at the front. So and he was proud of himself and why shouldn’t he be?

So, Daniel, I met him on autism’s got talent and he is going to be singing at the Autism Hero Awards, which will be happening very soon in November. And we’re working towards autism’s got talent. We’ve only got a couple of weeks to go for the one in Ryslitt, which is the roadshow.

So check out the charity website, www.AnnaKennedyOnline.com. So my guest today is Louise Walker. Hello, Louise.

Hello. And how are you today on this wet morning? Yes, I’m well, actually.

Thank you very well. So you’re a paediatric occupational therapist and you’re also a mum of two boys. And you are you’ve got a passion to continue to learn and explore.

And you’re doing a master’s, I believe. Yes, I’m doing a master’s in business. We’re going to be talking a little bit about Iron Man.

So that’s going to be later on in the show. So listen in if you want to find out what Louise and Iron Man have in common. OK, Louise.

So tell me, who is Louise before we go into the line of work that you do? Who are you? Where are you born?

So I’m originally I was born in 1972 in Portsmouth and I did my occupational therapy degree in Canterbury and qualified about twenty three years ago. And then I worked with adults. So my first experience was working in neurology with stroke patients, people with multiple sclerosis and things.

And then I had children myself. How old are they? Now they’re 14 and 13.

Oh, teenagers. Two boys. But when my son was three, he was diagnosed with autism.

And yeah, that was a whole new world that I had to explore myself.

[Speaker 2] (2:36 – 2:36)
Have you heard of it before?

[Speaker 1] (2:36 – 2:37)
Not really.

[Speaker 2] (2:37 – 2:37)
No.

[Speaker 1] (2:39 – 7:57)
And there’s so much out there about the differences with autism. So family members would be like, but he’s so happy. He’s so cheery and he’s really social and he’s not autistic.

And there was just then, so sort of 11 years ago, there wasn’t that much information on the spectrum of disorders that you find with autism. So it was really hard. I sort of found it really hard trying to come to terms with one, my son is autistic.

And second, trying to convince family members that he’s just not naughty, that there is so many parents who say the same thing. It’s just because you can’t see it. You know, somebody’s blind.

You can see obviously that they’ve got a disability. They’ve got a broken leg, they have plasters. I used to want to wrap a bandage around his head.

He’s not well, but he is well. He’s just a bit different. So tell me a little bit about, so an occupational therapist, what’s the training involved?

I’ve always been interested in finding out what training is involved. So you have to do a three year degree, which focuses on anatomy and physiology. You cover sociology, psychology.

And then really the whole point of occupational therapy is activities of daily living. And it’s not until someone has a difficulty or whether a child is not able to explore their environment the same way as a neurotypical child, that you realize that this affects our daily life, such as getting a self washing dress in the morning, communities, interacting with others, getting on public transport. Everything we do every day is taken for granted until something happens and we can’t do that anymore.

And then we realize just how important all our everyday activities are. So do you work with children and adults or just children? I just work with children now.

And what sort of things? Do you go into schools? Yeah, so actually I work privately, but I also work for Kensington and Chelsea based in the town hall.

I want to work for a Cams unit called the Behaviour Family Support Team, which is based on the psychologists. They get referred children who are having behavioural difficulties, they’re at home and all at school. And then if they have sensory processing difficulties, they then get referred to me.

So I was part of the Special Educational Needs and Disability March because obviously there’s a lot of parents that are worrying about cuts. Are there any cuts in your area? Yeah, there are early years funding and then even within secondary education there’s lots of cuts.

Lots of the TAs have been cuts, just not enough staff to help. Two years for me are like the back born, special education on these. I know, and the schools just don’t have the financial funding to support children who do have difficulties in the classroom.

And if there’s 30 kids in the classroom, how can a teacher cope if one child does demonstrate loss? Lots of sensory processing difficulties can’t handle being in a classroom with 30 and they want to leave all the time. You need extra support in the classroom to help the teachers to actually educate the children.

I might have shared this before quite a while ago, but I go to Zumba and there’s a teacher that works in a mainstream school and she’s got 30 pupils. And she said most of the pupils in the class have got some sort of additional needs. So whether they’ve got OCD, whether they’ve got mental health issues, whether they’ve got dyslexia, dyspraxia, and she hardly has any help whatsoever.

And she says sometimes she just feels really overwhelmed and by the paperwork as well that they’ve got to fill out. And she said she’s had a couple of days where she says, you know, I know I’m a good teacher and I know, but sometimes it just feels so overwhelming because I haven’t got the support. And she said to me one particular day, she was so overwhelmed that she went into the resources cupboard, had a little cry and then came out.

But she said that’s, yeah, you know, so I just, I just can’t imagine. And also in the education setting is that the teachers aren’t educated on children with disabilities. They know that the child might have autism or attention deficit or dyslexia.

But how does that actually represent them in the classroom? What does that actually mean in their learning? So there’s not enough education in the schools about children with difficulties.

So that’s why that’s another avenue that shouldn’t be cut for the schools. So we’re going to talk a little bit about autism and sleep, which affects a lot of families and obviously myself, you know, my son’s twenty six. We’ve just been chatting about, you know, you only get sort of three to four hours sleep per night.

He just doesn’t seem to a lot. So do you get a lot of parents that ask you questions about sleep? Yeah, every one I see usually have sleep disturbances at some point.

And usually when you think about the child’s life, it’s going to school. I always sort of say to parents, it’s like them having to be in an interview all day. They’re on their best behavior.

They’re trying their best. They really want to please their teachers. It’s very uncommon that children in early years want to be naughty.

They actually want to fit in. They want to be a good student or a pupil. And they become get so anxious that it’s very common that when mum or dad or whoever comes to pick them up, they’re very angry.

They like to have angry outbursts. And then the anxiety that they’ve had all day is just follows them around after school. And then it’s really hard to settle them down in order to have a nice bedtime routine and go to sleep.

Yeah, because they’re worrying about probably the next day.

[Speaker 2] (7:57 – 7:58)
Worrying about the next day.

[Speaker 1] (7:58 – 8:45)
Some children obviously get bullied as well within the school because the scene is a little bit different. They find lunch times and play times difficult because obviously those are the most social times. So what sort of tips do you give to mums and dads that obviously want to try and get their son or daughter to sleep?

Obviously people listening in and thinking, oh, she might be able to sleep. Yeah, so as an occupational therapist, what I do is complete a sensory profile. And what does that mean?

So it’s sort of five areas to do with how a child processes sensory stimuli when they’re in their environment. So for example, some children might not be able to discriminate noise, so they hear everything. And a child in a class of 30 that can hear everything, they’re talking about the overhead projector.

Children swinging, just walking with their clothes.

[Speaker 2] (8:45 – 8:46)
Scraping the chairs on the floor.

[Speaker 1] (8:46 – 9:06)
Writing, sniffing, they hear everything. So they really find it hard to concentrate. So the short profile sensory thing that’s completed sort of highlights the areas that a child might have difficulties in.

So how long would something like that take to complete? Would it take you a few days, a week? No, it takes, it’s just a questionnaire, short questionnaire.

[Speaker 2] (9:07 – 9:07)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (9:07 – 9:08)
But with a caregiver.

[Speaker 2] (9:08 – 9:09)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (9:09 – 9:12)
And you can, it’s half an hour. All right, okay. Just ask the questions.

[Speaker 2] (9:13 – 9:13)
Right.

[Speaker 1] (9:14 – 10:21)
The caregiver knows usually what’s going on. And then it just will highlight the areas. And then there are areas that are highlighted that they might have a tactile sensitivity.

They might have a smile sensitivity. They might be overactive or not active enough. Always seem like they’ve lost their motivation.

And then with each area, there’s, I give them strategies to use to improve that. Okay. So that’s interesting.

So once the strategies are put in place, then obviously we’ll speak to the teachers, teaching assistants, parents. So everyone’s working together. So everyone, if you like, is singing from the same him sheet.

Because there’s nothing worse than you’re doing something at home. The teachers are doing something in the classroom and then they’re getting mixed messages. So how do you help that?

Is there any training for parents, do you think? There is training for parents. There’s early years intervention and early years plus intervention, which is teachers’ parents, how they can communicate with their child.

Because sometimes with the children with autism, their speech, they’re not as verbal. And us parents love to always talk to them. Sometimes we need to reduce the amount we speak to them and just basically say facts of, you know, it’s going to be bath time.

[Speaker 2] (10:22 – 10:22)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (10:22 – 10:28)
And it’s story time. Not, oh, you know, whoever, can you go upstairs? You know, we’re going to run the bath and we’re going to have a nice hot bubbly bath.

[Speaker 2] (10:28 – 10:28)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (10:28 – 11:14)
It just needs to be quite factual in what’s happening. Okay. Because especially when they’ve been through the daytime and they’ve had so much stimuli, it’s just quite nice to reduce as much stimuli as you can at sort of nighttime.

And also this will be an ongoing process because things change, behaviors change. Something happens during the day that might have a knock on effect at night. So I think the main key is to have a bedtime routine, which I know everyone talks about.

It can be quite frustrating when you’re struggling with a child. But I think that’s the key. You have to start doing the bedtime routine kind of around the same time every night so that the child then starts understanding what’s happening next.

That’s the big thing with autistic children, they want to know what’s happening next. And consistency, I would say, because some parents, they try it for like a few days and they think you’ve got to keep doing the same thing.

[Speaker 2] (11:15 – 11:16)
Consistency is key. Yeah, most definitely.

[Speaker 1] (11:17 – 12:06)
All right. Well, thank you for that. And we’re going to be chatting a little bit later on.

We are going to be talking about autism, sleep, occupational therapy. We’re going to be talking something called fidgetbum. So that mind boggles.

So, yeah, if you would like to be one of my speakers, please contact me on the charity website. So if you’d like to talk about if you’re a parent, if you’re a carer, if you’re a teacher, if you’re an autistic adult, please contact me on www.annakennedyonline.com or you can contact me via Twitter at Anna Kennedy One. You can contact me on Facebook, Anna Kennedy Online, or you can contact me on Instagram, which is Anna Kennedy OBE.

Thank you very much. Welcome to Women’s Radio Station. I’m Sarah Louise Ryan and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women’s Radio Station.

[Speaker 2] (12:06 – 12:11)
Hello, and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stepania Passamante on Women’s Radio Station.

[Speaker 1] (12:12 – 19:55)
Hello, and welcome to June May is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy, and we’re at Women’s Radio Station supporting women’s wellbeing, and we’re talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless.

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Join us on Instagram and Twitter at Women’s Radio Station, that’s Women’s Radio STN, or Facebook Women’s Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programmes. Hello, this is Anna Kennedy. We’re talking all things autism.

We’re live and we’re in Covent Garden and we’re talking about autism and sleep. Before I go over to my guest Louise, I just wanted to let you know about something that the charities do, and we’ve got a tennis-inclusive fun day, which is happening on Saturday, and it’s between two and four. If you check out the charity website, it’s Get Set for Tennis.

You get a free 30-minute session and it’s special educational needs friendly, and also you can bring your siblings so it looks like a lot of fun, and if this works really well, then we’ll be doing them on a regular basis and they’re free sessions, because I know parents are always struggling to look for things to do out of hours. There’s a lot of parents that contact me. I spoke to a parent as well when I was in Cork.

She said that her son is really, really into architecture, into doing. She wants him to progress with it, but he’s only eight years old, and she’s trying to find stuff for him to do, so I said sometimes you have to think out of the box. There was another lady that was saying there was a son who basically, he loves to create piano pieces, and he’s like nine years old.

He’s got Asperger’s syndrome, and she said he’s amazing, but I said you could set up a little YouTube channel. Just keep thinking out of the box. Just set up something, and you don’t know who might see him perform or they might ask him to write a song.

I also do something that’s called the Chrissy B Show, and my guest this week, which is going to be aired on Monday at 10 o’clock, is Jo Luck. Jo is one of my charity patrons, and she’s been a charity patron for quite some time, 2013. She’s World Kickbox Champion, and she went through a difficult period last year and this year with mental health, and she had a difficult period in the hospital, so what she’s done is, since she’s come out and she’s in a good place now, she’s actually written some training, and she’s training the people that were looking after her in the mental health unit, so good on Jo.

She’s going to be talking about that on Monday on 10 o’clock, which is on Sky 191. So Louise, thank you again for coming along and talking to me about autism and sleep, which is a huge thing for families, especially for me with a young man. Well, a young man, he’s 26 now.

I can’t believe I’m saying that Angelo’s 26, and Patrick is 29. So what sort of things do parents come with? I know we’ve chatted a little bit about, but I’d like to know a little bit more about do parents ask you about medication?

Do they ask you about various things that they might be able to use, lighting, because there’s a whole load of things that you can get to try and help your son or daughter sleep, and I know what it’s like that you might buy something and you think it’s going to be an instant fix, but some things work, some things doesn’t work, and even with Angelo, it might work for a little while, and then something, it just doesn’t seem to work anymore.

I remember this gentleman that came all the way from Chicago. He brought me a vibrating bed that had a heartbeat to it, and it was just like, wow, he set it up, and I was really amazed that he’d come all that way, but it worked for a little while, but then it just didn’t work anymore. But as I was saying, the bed’s fantastic.

It is really Tonka-proof, because Angelo’s broken so many beds because he likes that sensory input of throwing himself, bouncing, all those sort of things. So talk to me a little bit about what type of things parents can do to just try and get a few hours’ sleep. Yes, I think the most important thing for parents is they obviously need sleep as well, but with children, a lot of children who have sleep deficits usually have a tactile, a touch sensitivity.

There’s been a few studies out there that have kind of proved that that’s the case. So a lot of children like to have deep pressure. I don’t know whether you or your son likes to have things tightly wrapped around him, and there’s also something that’s called the brushing technique, which is where…

It’s called the wool bar technique, but it’s a brushing program where you brush every two hours, initially for the first week, on their arms, on their body. Is that a particular type of brush? It’s like a white, very, very sort of silicone bristles that you brush just gently on the skin, all over, not on the tummy or face, just on the arms, and that just provides some sensory proprioception, so sort of tactile feedback to the neurosystem of where their body is in space, and it just makes them feel like that calmness that children need to feel, which is the same as the deep pressure gives when you put something heavy over a child.

Yeah, I was speaking to Joe and I was speaking to Daniel, and they were talking to me about how much they like pressure. So Daniel likes to do weightlifting, and he showed us some videos of him with his legs or his knees, 225 kilograms. I thought, oh, my word.

But he said he just, it helps himself, you know, get back to self, what was the word he used, self-stimulate or that sort of thing.

[Speaker 2] (19:55 – 19:56)
Self-regulate.

[Speaker 1] (19:56 – 22:47)
That’s it, yeah, and then Joe likes kickboxing, and that helps her self-regulate the harder she hits, the better that she self-regulates. Yeah, that neurofeedback, basically, that stimulates the areas of the brain that needs to be stimulated to make a child feel safe. So at nighttime, I would always encourage listening to some calm music, getting into a deep pressure kind of thing, maybe wrapped up in a blanket, or just, actually, I don’t know if your son likes it, my son loves it, massage, the sort of joint, you know, you’re touching and squeezing their arms while reading them a story.

And then… What about oils and things? Because people always say about lavender, put lavender under your pillow, put lavender in the bath.

I have tried all that, and I really love the smell of lavender, but it doesn’t make Angela go to sleep. Do you know what, it’s what works for you, and I think every child’s different. My son has lavender spray on his pillow, and I don’t know whether it’s psychological, whether it works, whether it’s a placebo effect, but it also helps.

He has, I mean, it’s all this whole lavender oil he likes to spray, and also there’s some… You can get magnesium oil, I’m not promoting that, but to help, sort of, with the muscles. There’s lots of things.

What’s the magnesium salts that you’ve got in the bath? For me, I think bedtime needs to be really calm. Hopefully, if mum, dad, the caregiver can actually try and be in a calm space themselves.

And also, you know, a lot of children who have autism have got many siblings. So sometimes life can be really hectic. So I think it’s about trying to make them have a less busy evening routine.

And if the caregiver is able to sort of spend half an hour just with them on their own, if that’s possible, just to try and do bedtime routine, a nice bath, nice sort of massage with sort of deep pressure, and then sort of maybe just trying to get the room a bit dim. I was just going to say about lighting and the way you set up the room. So I’ve tried various different lightings.

I’ve tried things that, like, put stars on the ceiling, things that look like a water feature. You just try anything. And it’s really hard because sometimes you might try something and actually because they’re so aware of that during the night, they might wake up and that’s what keeps them awake.

And what I found with my son is for him, it was getting to sleep. So he would take two, three, four, five hours to actually get to sleep. Always want mum, it was always me, going in, having to lay next to him.

He liked the deep pressure approach. I used to have sort of lovely, fluffy blankets that he used to like on him. And obviously, you know, he used to like a bit of a back massage.

And then it got to the point where I was quite worried about his sleep. Was he getting enough sleep to help him at school the next day? So we went down the route of having melatonin.

[Speaker 2] (22:47 – 22:49)
I was going to talk to you about medication.

[Speaker 1] (22:49 – 22:56)
Obviously, I wouldn’t advocate for medication, but, you know, you obviously need to speak to your GP. Yes, yeah, or your pediatrician. Yeah, what’s best?

[Speaker 2] (22:58 – 22:58)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (22:58 – 23:46)
So you tried melatonin. Yeah, we tried melatonin. And melatonin is, as the pediatrician told me, is just a natural hormone.

We produce melatonin to go to sleep. It happens when we’re in darkness. Our brain will produce melatonin, that will give us a sleepy effect.

And with children with autism, it doesn’t necessarily, they don’t produce enough melatonin. Or they might produce it during the day and not necessarily when it should be at nighttime. So they might have a sort of sleepy period or a restful, not so busy period during the day, but then be quite high point when it comes to bedtime.

So melatonin worked for us initially. You have an hour before going to bed, and it does knock you out. The only thing is, well, knock you out is not the right word to use.

[Speaker 2] (23:46 – 23:47)
It puts your child to sleep.

[Speaker 1] (23:49 – 34:47)
But it doesn’t keep them asleep. So if your child wakes up, they might get a good sort of four hours, but then they’re awake. So it doesn’t keep a child asleep throughout the whole night.

Yeah, I went to the GP when Angelo was younger, and they wouldn’t prescribe it for me. I don’t know why, but he wasn’t having any of it. They did prescribe something called balligan, which didn’t work.

And then they also prescribed chloral hydrate, which also didn’t work. It had the opposite effect. You just made it really hyper.

So, no. But as I say, things work sometimes, and then it just doesn’t seem to last. That’s the thing.

He’s just obviously quite an active young man, and he just doesn’t need a lot of sleep. And I also advise parents is that if you have a child that is quite hyper, that doesn’t go to sleep easy. It’s just to exercise them.

You know, try and get them into sports as much as possible. It’s a good stress buster, I think. My son was doing, he tried kickboxing for a while, my eldest son, and he enjoyed it.

And walking, brisk walking, it’s pretty good. Walkings, swimming, gymnastics is really good. Because some children don’t like to tip their head upside down.

It’s a whole gravitational feeling, but they get to do that in a safe environment so that then they can put on their shoes and socks without having mum and mum to help them. What other challenges do parents come to you? So, we’ve spoken quite a bit about sleep, and we’re going to go back to that.

But are there any other challenges that parents come to you as an occupational therapist that I’m thinking about things like difficulty eating? Because I know my son would have special adapted forks that he could get because he’d find the grip difficult for him to eat. So, is there anything else that parents come to you with?

Yeah, a lot of children with autism have food sensitivities and temperatures and textures. It’s a really big thing. So, when a child puts something in its mouth, it’s how that feels for that child.

Some prefer running food and would never have something crunchy like a raw carrot. So, that’s what the sensory profile is really good at because it can kind of really identify the areas where it is an issue which we can need to work on. So, there’s food, obviously sleep.

What about things like personal hygiene? That’s difficult sometimes for Angelo, as in water. It’s almost like he puts his hand under the water sometimes.

It looks like it’s scalding him even though it’s not. So, there’s all that sensory stuff that’s going on. It’s the sensory, it’s the feeling they get.

So, it’s like the way I would explain it as an analogy is like you being in a house storm. Sometimes that’s what it feels like for a child when they’ve got water on their skin. So, it’s about understanding.

Okay, we’ve run out of time for the second half now. So, we’re going to talk a little bit more. So, again, if you want to ask a question, I can pass them on to Louise.

If you contact me via the charity website, it’s www. Oh, too many W’s there, www.annaKennedyonline.com at AnnaKennedy1 on Twitter. AnnaKennedy online on Facebook and on Instagram.

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Women’s radio station supporting women’s wellbeing. Hello, this is Anna Kennedy. We’re talking all things autism.

We’re lag. We’re in Cobham Garden. And my guest today is Louise Walker, and she’s an occupational therapist.

Before we go, we’re going to talk a little bit about schools and what teachers can do to make their classroom a little bit more autism friendly. But before we go over to that, I just wanted to remind you about the Autism Hero Awards. The judges had such a tough time to choose 36 finalists.

And they are all going to be traveling down to London on November the 9th. And it’s going to be at the Chelsea Harbour Hotel. So if you would like to come along and support them, or if you know any of the finalists, please check out the charity website.

All the names of the finalists are on there. So whether they’re caregivers, professionals, teachers, there could be a reporter, business. Come along and support them.

It’s going to be a fantastic evening. Daniel’s going to be singing two songs on the evening. Casey Ainsworth, one of our charity patrons, is coming along who’s also a parent of a young man on the spectrum.

And Dr. Pam Spur is another one of our supporters who comes regularly to our charity events. Come along. All the information is on the charity website, and that’s on the Autism Hero site, which is www.autismheroawards.com.

We’ve also got the date of our expo, which is going to be happening at Brunel University. So that’s March the 28th. We’re going to be putting information up about that very soon, who our speakers are going to be.

If you want to book a stand, please come along. It’s such a great day where people can basically listen to speakers, have a walk around the stands, and get free advice and information. So it could be legal.

It could be OT advice. It could be speech and language therapy. It could be behavior management.

Whatever it may be, it’s just £10 for the day, and you get all of that from 9 to 5 o’clock. And you can network. There’s a cost there where people can sit down and have a coffee, have a chat about stuff that’s happening within your family and share strategies.

So, Louise, tell me a little bit about, obviously, schools can be quite challenging for a lot of our children. And I know Patrick used to find it so difficult to go to school. And for him, it was the sensory difficulty.

So things like the scratching of the chairs on the floor, lunch times were difficult for him because, you know, some of the kids just didn’t want to hear him talk about whatever his interest was at that time and listen to it for the less sort of 20 minutes or a half an hour, whatever it was, that he wanted to talk about. So what can we do to make life a little bit easier for our children in the classroom and also for parents? Yes, I think for what is recommended with the clients that we see in Kensington and Chelsea and the Cairns team, I think visual timetables are really quite key.

Okay. Even though a child intellectually might know that, yes, they’re going to school and they’re going to be at school until 3 o’clock and then they’re going to come home, I can’t recommend just what that visual site of what they’re doing that day, the impact that that actually has. But they can just see it and they know.

So I think if families could use the visual timetable in the morning to say they go to school, because most schools do use visual timetables in the classroom and I think that’s really key. I think I remember too as a parent just sort of, you know, getting to school, getting to school was hard enough, getting them in and everyone used to talk about visual timetables but when I actually started using one and he could see that we’ve got to get in the buggy, go walk and get into the classroom and break it down into the manageable steps. So he just knew what was happening next and he could see it.

I’m quite a visual learner. And it was just there, really easy. Didn’t have to think about anything to see what’s happening next.

I think that would really help with the transitioning. Stick to it if you can. Stick to it.

I know a lot of children hate it because they don’t want to have anything that represents school at home. That’s another thing they like to keep home as home and school as school. But if you can really be consistent, consistency is key, I feel.

It does actually make them feel safer going into school and it reduces the anxiety with the transition. Then when they’re in the classroom, I think it’s really important for teachers to be aware that the children cannot discriminate different types or noises. So they hear everything.

So if they’re talking and they’ve got the overhead projector on and it doesn’t need to be on, maybe just think about turning that off. If the window’s open because it’s hot and there’s a traffic that’s rode outside, just close the windows. Close the doors.

Just try and keep noise to a minimum as much as possible, as feasible as it is in the school. Some of the parents talked to me about, obviously, when they’re going into school, it’s very busy. So everyone’s parking the car, crossing the road and all the rest of it.

And some schools have been great where they say, okay, bring Tom in 15 minutes, a little bit later because, obviously, it’s less busy. They’re able to come into school. So do you get anything like that?

[Speaker 2] (34:47 – 34:48)
Yeah, definitely.

[Speaker 1] (34:48 – 35:43)
And I think parents have really got to communicate with the school. And if your child gets too much for them, then speak to the school and, like you, Anna, get them brought in 15, 20 minutes earlier. I know my son used to be really good at helping out with the chairs because he used to like that deep pressure before sitting down for any kind of type of lesson.

So he used to go in and he would help the teacher sharpen the pencils or put the chairs out for the children. And they like those type of jobs as well because it makes them feel important. Yeah, and it’s physical.

And then it just sets them up to then be able to sit down still on the carpet while they have registration. Another thing for teachers is also with children on the spectrum is if you’re going to talk to that child, make sure you, as much as possible, can be looking at them. And if possible, to say their name.

If you just say, right, kids, let’s get your coat on now. It’s home time. They don’t know who kids are.

[Speaker 2] (35:44 – 35:45)
They don’t know who.

[Speaker 1] (35:46 – 37:22)
They used to be sitting on the carpet and they’d say, right, everybody get up now. Go to your desk and this is what we’re going to do. And then everyone would go to their desk and Patrick would still be sitting on the carpet and he said, well, you didn’t say money.

Exactly. I mean, it’s such a, you know, when you think about it, it’s so true. You need to have that eye contact.

You need to say the child’s name. So when you say everybody, go and get your coats on, you need to then maybe, if there is support in the classroom, if the teacher can have time just to go over and maybe say their name and just make sure that they’ve understood and heard. Also, very, very important is not to give a child too many steps to do, too many, you really need to break an activity down.

So can you give me an example of what does that mean? Yes, so if they were going to be doing, talking, doing phonics and they’re going to be doing, I don’t know, A to E. I can’t say the phonics anymore, A to E.

It might be really important that they have the visual timetable or the visual aid, A, and then the visual things, Apple, and so that they can see what they’re talking about. So the visual aid, when they’re trying to teach, is also really important. And then breaking the steps, I said they were to write a story and the teacher might say, so we’re going to do the beginning, the middle and the end, actually just focus on the beginning initially.

Don’t even talk about the middle and the end until the child’s done the beginning and then talk about the middle and then talk about the end. It depends as well on the child and where they are at. They’re all so different from each other.

What frustrates me is that saying, if you’ve met one child with autism, you’ve met one child with autism. If you’ve worked with that child, it doesn’t mean you know everything.

[Speaker 2] (37:22 – 37:25)
You know about that particular child that you’re working with.

[Speaker 1] (37:25 – 38:47)
And I think in a class of 30, that kind of can be quite impossible. So maybe if the teacher can then just spend a minute after she’s maybe described to the class what’s needed to be done, just to go over and just check, because sometimes the short-term memory, they’re so anxious about trying to just cope and listen, that they don’t hear everything and they don’t process everything. So it might just be needed, the teacher just to go after and just sort of make sure the child understands what they need to do.

What about having a timeout room at school? So if it just gets that little bit too noisy or a little bit overwhelming where somewhere they can just sit down. Wouldn’t that be amazing if they had these timeout rooms?

It’s such an easy thing to do really, isn’t it? And it’s just that that child would be in a better head space than for learning. In my experience, a child can usually concentrate mostly for 20 minutes and they do need to have a movement break, whether that’s getting up to get a drink, whether that’s getting up to put books away, take the register to the office.

Children really do need to move around, especially the fidgety ones that are bouncing on one leg on their chair. They need to have as many movement breaks as is possible in a school environment. Okay, would you recommend, and have you found that schools have been quite open to children having fidget toys?

Because obviously sometimes fidget toys can help a child. Do you remember when the spinners came out?

[Speaker 2] (38:47 – 38:50)
Everyone was having the spinners. My husband’s got one on his desk.

[Speaker 1] (38:50 – 39:54)
I think some of the schools have banned them now, haven’t they? Especially in the secondary education, because it was just too distracting. But fiddly toys.

Again, if you’ve got a young child and you’re transitioning from home to school, if they’re walking, if they’ve got something that they can play and fiddle with, they’re brilliant. Whoever invented fiddly toys are amazing. They’re great.

How can you help a child during break times? Because obviously those are the most sensory overload times I would find. And also that they’re the most unstructured times.

They’re the times you’re expected to have more social interaction, communication. What can we do to help kids? These are the times when the children really do need the support of adults and of the teachers.

And I think it’s very important for teachers not to think, well, they need to go outside and socialise because they need to learn to be out of social interact. They can’t. Then they have difficulties in social interaction.

They need to be taught that. So if schools could actually have a little group with children who have social communication difficulties and they could set up little groups at break time, would be just brilliant lunchtime clubs.

[Speaker 2] (39:54 – 39:55)
Lots of different lunchtime clubs.

[Speaker 1] (39:55 – 42:08)
Just clubs. But again, that takes extra funding and schools are being… Yeah, but sometimes it doesn’t take extra funding if you think about it.

If you had, say, a Lego club or what we’ve done as well at the school is we’ve had parents that have come in that have got strengths or somebody might play the guitar. So they’ll come in for a half an hour a week and they’ll teach. So I always think out the box, there’s so many different things you can do that just don’t cost money.

And when you think about an autistic child with maybe sensory processing difficulties, going out into one of them playgrounds with all that noise, all that running around, kids screaming, it’s so overwhelming that it’s really stressful. I remember going to a school where the head teacher was very proud of the support that was in place for children with autism. So I was in the playground and I was watching a child that was walking all around the edge of the playground and that’s all that we’re doing.

And then he said, oh, I said, oh, see that young man over there? Is he on the spectrum? He said, oh, yes, he is.

And he said, we went up to him and I introduced myself and then the young man actually said to the head teacher, I’m not coping here very well. And it was just, you could see it was a little bit embarrassing but I could see that he wasn’t part of the, he was just walking by himself around the playground edge. So we’re going to talk a little bit more now in the next section and we’re going to bring in Melwood from Fidget Bum and that’s how you both met.

And we’re going to talk about what Fidget Bum is. Obviously I know what it is but we will let everybody know in the next half. So again, if you’d like to be one of my speakers on women’s radio station, please contact me via www.annakennedyonline.com or you can contact me via the charity website or the charity telephone line, which is 01895-540-187 at Anna Kennedy One on Twitter, Anna Kennedy Online on Facebook, Anna Kennedy OBE on Instagram. And I update every single day on information that I find that I might think that’s useful to you and what I am doing day to day. Welcome to Women’s Radio Station. I’m Sarah Louise Ryan and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women’s Radio Station.

[Speaker 2] (42:08 – 42:13)
Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stepania Passamante on Women’s Radio Station.

[Speaker 1] (42:13 – 44:13)
Hello and welcome to June May is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we’re at Women’s Radio Station supporting women’s wellbeing and we’re talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless.

That’s what makes us different. Hi, I’m Lauren Mishcon. I’m a birth doula and mum of three and I’m passionate about supporting women to have empowering and positive birth experiences.

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[Speaker 2] (44:14 – 44:25)
Focusing specifically on women and girls is excluded from information due to extreme poverty. We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own and share information.

[Speaker 1] (44:25 – 45:20)
To find out more and be part of this movement, come check out our website at mediamattersforwomen.org. You’re listening to Women’s Radio Stations supporting women’s wellbeing. Women’s Radio Stations creating a global network for the empowerment of women and we want you to be involved.

Join us on Instagram and Twitter at womensradiostation, that’s womensradiostn or Facebook womensradiostation to keep up to date with all our exciting programmes. Hello, this is Anna Kennedy. We’re talking all things autism.

We’re live and we’re in Coburn Garden and I have two guests with me for the last 12-minute section of my show. I’ve got Mel Wood from Fidgetbum. Hello, Mel.

Hello, Anna. Thank you for having me. Nice to see you again.

And we’ve got Louise. So how did you two meet? How did we meet Louise?

[Speaker 2] (45:21 – 45:23)
Come on, spill.

[Speaker 1] (45:24 – 46:16)
Well, actually, we met when Louise’s eldest, Charlie’s, and my eldest, Hannah, went swimming lessons together. And that’s how we met and we kept bumping into one another. Yeah, because they were at the same school in the same year.

So on the school run, as mums will know, you get to meet lots of different mums and families and caregivers, dropping their kids off and picking them up. And then, of course, Louise was following me on social media with Fidgetbum. And then we were chatting about it probably about a year ago now.

And I was just explaining to Louise how Fidgetbum was helping so many children with sleep issues. Okay. So we started to discuss how it was helping.

And you mentioned about there was something that you were looking into, looking for sleep paint.

[Speaker 2] (46:17 – 46:17)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (46:17 – 47:02)
So I was just about to be in the process of thinking about getting a weighted blanket. But there’s also much talk about should you sleep with a weighted blanket or not. And they’re really expensive, 170 pound.

And we met and it was, you know, Mel was like, oh, I’m doing, you know, Fidgetbum is for, because I was, when you first set up Fidgetbum, the idea of Fidgetbum was to try and keep the duvet on your child when she was young, wasn’t it? When you had sleep problems. That’s right.

Because Millie, when I did the transition from cot to bed, she would be waking about 10 times a night, having kicked off her duvet, calling out always for mommy, never for daddy, to put the duvet back on. And that’s what gave me the idea because as a baby, she liked to be swaddled.

[Speaker 2] (47:02 – 47:02)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (47:02 – 47:28)
Because she liked that kind of sensory feel, you know, that kind of, that deep pressure. So I kind of got the idea of like a chubby grit bandage. So that’s when I designed Fidgetbum, believe it or not, from, she had a snuggle blanket.

So I made it, this wrap that goes underneath the mattress and over the top of her in the duvet and zips up. So it gives her that kind of like a hugging bed. So that whole security factor.

And of course it worked.

[Speaker 2] (47:29 – 47:29)
Oh, okay.

[Speaker 1] (47:29 – 47:47)
Honestly, it was the best thing I designed. And of course we were all then, you know, sleeping at least eight hours a night. So I never looked back and now, she’s now 10 and now I’m helping all sorts of children with different sleep issues.

And I’m literally going global with it at the moment as well, which is wonderful.

[Speaker 2] (47:47 – 47:47)
Oh, brilliant.

[Speaker 1] (47:48 – 48:00)
Okay. So if someone’s interested in Fidgetbum, it’s a blanket, you’re saying, that you wrap around the bed with a zip and it feels like someone’s hugging them. That’s right.

And they don’t kick the blankets off the bed. That’s what I’m getting from it.

[Speaker 2] (48:00 – 48:00)
That’s right.

[Speaker 1] (48:00 – 51:19)
So it’s a stretch piece of material that you feed underneath the mattress and it comes over the top of the chard and duvet and zips up. Or actually a lot of our children actually like the feel of Fidgetbum because it’s so sensory friendly that they actually have Fidgetbum on top of them and then the duvet on top of them. So you can use it in warmer weathers without the duvet.

Or when it’s cold, you can use it with a duvet. And can you wash them? Yes, easily washed and tumble dries as well really well.

So I now do them in different sizes. I started off with toddler, single, and now do double, king size. I do extra long sizes to cover the whole bed and I also do bespoke sizes for hospital beds as well.

Oh, okay. You should go on drug instead. Everyone says that.

So I met Mel and was like, oh, you know, she said, why don’t you try one for Charlie, my son? So we tried one and instantly his sleep was just so much better. It was just unbelievable.

Usually he moves around a lot in the bed. The duvet would be all over the place. He’d have about three different things wrapped around him, a blanket here and something else that he’d find that was heavy on him.

And the first night we used Fidgetbum, he usually wakes up about half past five, six. At ten past seven, he was still asleep and I went into the bedroom and he hadn’t moved. He was in the kind of, a bit like a fetal position in bed and he had just hadn’t moved in the night.

It was just perfect. I couldn’t believe it. So I was like, well, this is great.

I mean, amazing actually. So I, he still uses it now. He’s 14.

He’s six foot. So I don’t think it matters really what size your child or how old your child is. Okay.

And he basically says that he just gets a better night’s sleep. Okay. And we don’t use melatonin anymore.

That’s all good news. So, so what sort of questions the parents come to you, do they ask about Fidgetbum and say, how’s that going to help my son? It sounds too good to be true, all that sort of thing.

So what sort of things the parents come to you? Well, I mean, firstly, I mean, as Louise said, you know, you went into his room and he was still kind of in the same position as you left it. Can’t believe it, yeah.

Now, a lot of parents will ask, can my child still move around, wriggle around and get out of bed? Yes, they can. Okay.

Because of the material is stretched. It’s a four-way stretch. Right.

So they can still easily get out of bed without even unzipping Fidgetbum. So that’s fine. It just gives them that slight squeeze.

And as I said, it’s that whole security factor. And like you say, it’s kind of keeps them grounded. So, you know, that’s kind of probably typically the question that a lot of parents will ask me.

Okay. Another question that we’re asked is, again, do we do them in different colors? Okay.

We are looking at that option, but at this moment in time, you’re buying it for the functionality as opposed to, and also because of the children that we’re helping or that Fidgetbum is helping the majority of, is just to keep it neutral. It’s just kind of simple. You don’t want too kind of busy, you know, vibrant colors and bright colors.

[Speaker 2] (51:19 – 51:20)
So it’s a neutral color.

[Speaker 1] (51:21 – 52:32)
Which kind of works with the bedroom design. And also during the day, you can actually just pop it because it’s got the zip up the middle. You can actually pop it underneath the duvet during the day.

So actually the child can still enjoy their favorite bed signs. So it’s very, very discreet. So if somebody wants to check it out, where would they look for it?

If you want to check us out, if you look at us on www.fidgetbum.com or we’re also on Amazon as well. Okay. You want social media with stories that parents might share?

Yes. Social media on Instagram with FidgetbumSleep and Facebook with FidgetbumPage and Twitter as well on FidgetbumSleep. So when you first designed it, it wasn’t specifically for kids who were autistic or have a disability, was it?

It was just for kids that were a wriggler. Absolutely. Because my daughter, she was an absolutely amazing sleeper in the cot with a little grow bag.

So she obviously liked to be cocooned. And it was then literally as soon as I transitioned her into a bed with a duvet, that was when she was kicking off the duvet. And we tried many kind of options, sleep aid products that were on the market, but nothing seemed to work for her.

And there isn’t actually a lot on the market.

[Speaker 2] (52:32 – 52:34)
There isn’t at all. You would think that there was.

[Speaker 1] (52:35 – 54:24)
Well, no, absolutely. And also because then I sort of contemplated putting her back into the grow bag, but I thought, no, you can’t go backwards. You’ve got to go forwards.

And then it’s the whole toilet training, et cetera. I mean, I did put her back into a larger sleeping bag, but then she was getting out of bed and then walking along the landing in this sleeping bag, which obviously your health hasn’t. So I said, no, surely there’s got to be a simple solution.

So then that’s when I just kind of wrapped my brain one day, just thinking, what can I do? And I made it and it just worked. And I thought, that’s it.

I want to help lots of other children. And this is why the beauty about social media has now taken me down this avenue of helping so many children with additional needs, even adults, not just children now. So, you know, with physical disabilities as well as mental disabilities, you know, I help children with cerebral palsy, down syndrome.

I’m helping all sorts of children, which is lovely. So something that was for your daughter is now helping lots of other children. That’s a nice story to share.

So you were doing a survey. Is that still going on on your website? Yes.

I must post that again. Every day I’m faced against different challenges trying to keep up to date with everything. We will share that sleep survey again.

So it will be interesting to answer the questions. I can hopefully help you, or Louise can help you if you have any challenges out there. So any other tips on occupational therapy before we sort of wind down for the show that you could share?

Well, I’d like to say to parents out there who feel that maybe their child could be possibly on the spectrum, or something that’s a bit different. Don’t hesitate. Go and see your GP.

Try and get a pediatrician referral.

[Speaker 2] (54:25 – 54:26)
How easy is that?

[Speaker 1] (54:27 – 55:39)
I don’t know how long it takes to wait, but speak to your GP, and phone up an occupational therapist. Phone up your local and just have a chat with somebody, because it might be the best thing you’ve done. As soon as a child’s sensory processing difficulties are addressed, it makes a massive difference.

So even without a diagnosis, go and see an OT as well, because I just feel that if you can help reduce the sensory difficulties that they have, then you’re then giving them a 10% extra chance to try and cope. And I think the thing is, if you work early on with the children, because we always talk about early intervention, that hopefully the better the outcome as they become a teenager and an adult. Research says the brain is the most neuroplastic between four and eight years.

I think some argue it’s between four and six. Not that it’s always neuroplastic. It can always change.

But it’s the most, children can be bilingual, trilingual. It’s that age. So in primary school, if you’re worried, just get your child checked out.

So we are coming to the end of the show. I wanted to say thank you very much. And before we finish off quickly, what do you do to relax?

I am commuting.

[Speaker 2] (55:39 – 55:41)
What are you talking about? I know.

[Speaker 1] (55:41 – 56:04)
I’m doing a massive triathlon next Sunday in Barcelona. It’s an Ironman. Okay.

What does that mean? It means I’ve got to do a 2.4 mile swim in the Mediterranean Sea. I’ve got to do a 112 mile bike ride.

And then it’s a marathon. Oh, my word. And you, Mel, what do you do to relax?

I don’t actually relax. No, I actually go out running three times a week.

[Speaker 2] (56:04 – 56:04)
Oh, do you?

[Speaker 1] (56:04 – 56:11)
Yes. I mean, when everyone’s still asleep, I go out running about six o’clock in the morning. It’s the only time I get during the course of the day.

[Speaker 2] (56:11 – 56:12)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (56:12 – 56:15)
And then with the children’s activities. So it’s a bit of a stress bus to be.

[Speaker 2] (56:15 – 56:16)
Yeah. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (56:17 – 59:57)
All right. So I always recommend that people take five parents in particular because obviously life is stressful, especially when you’ve got a child with a disability. So just do whatever you can.

If it’s just having a cup of coffee and a piece of cake, I walk around the park, go in the bathroom, shut the door and jump up and down and scream, whatever it is that can help you de-stress. Never feel guilty about it. Yeah.

Don’t feel guilty about it. So we’re coming to the end again. If you’d like to be one of the speakers on Women’s Radio Station, please contact me on www.annaKennedyOnline.com or you can message me via Twitter at AnnaKennedy1 at AnnaKennedy OBA on Instagram, AnnaKennedy Online on Facebook and you can ring me in the office. Thank you everyone. Have a good week. Welcome to the Women’s Radio Station supporting women’s wellbeing.

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