Stop Holding It All in Your Head | Allison Dickin of Neuraparent

Introduction to Alison Dicken and Neuroparent

0:00 Speaker A: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Inch Zones. One of the things that happens when you're raising a neurodivergent child is that you become an extraordinary observer of your own child and you start collecting information almost without realizing it. You know, what happens maybe before a meltdown, how they slept, what they ate, what changed at school, what transition was difficult, what helped last time, what helped two times ago. These tiny, tiny little patterns and clues that might mean nothing to anyone else, but you know, that they matter.

0:33 Speaker A: And the problem is, is that we're also exhausted on a. On a next level. And so much of that incredibly valuable knowledge, like, lives in this space of yours inside the. Inside your head that never gets put out and processed. And my guest today is Allison Dicken, who started thinking about that problem through a really interesting lens. And Alison is a mom, she's a researcher. She is the founder of Neuroparent, and it's a technology platform which I think is so cool, that is designed to help parents of neurodivergent children better understand the patterns, remember what works, and make sense of this just incredibly enormous amount of information that they're gather, already gathering and doing with their children.

1:18 Speaker A: This is so. So. Excuse me. So damn cool. So today we're gonna talk about when this generic parenting advice doesn' Fit your child and really how this AI and the AI world and technology like this allows parents like me to be. To understand our children better and to not pretend that technology can ever replace them, but it can help us better understand them. So, Alison, I am thrilled to welcome you here to the Inch Jones podcast.

1:45 Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me, Sarah, and thanks for that amazing introduction.

Alison's Parenting Journey and Early Struggles

1:49 Speaker B: I think you summed up so much about my thinking and what made me start to work on Neuroparent in your intro there.

1:56 Speaker A: Well, I'm so glad that we connected. You know, before we talk about Neuroparent, tell me more about your parenting experience and what really ultimately led you to build this.

2:05 Speaker B: Yeah, so I have One child, he's 8 years old, and we started. He. He started struggling in daycare when he was around 3, and, you know, we started to try and get outside support to figure out what might be going on because he was, you know, exhibiting challenging behaviors, I guess, more so than the other kids. And, you know, we went. We had evaluations, we went to play therapists, we went to occupational therapists. We did all the things. We talked to everyone, and we got a lot of advice, and some of it was helpful, but a lot of it just felt like it didn't Understand what was actually going on for my child and for me as.

2:46 Speaker B: As his parent and.

2:48 Speaker A: Or like, something was still missing. Yeah, it was like, this is great.

2:51 Speaker B: You know, you kind of get a lot of the same advice everywhere you go. And a lot of it comes down to, like, well, you, as the parent should be. You know, you have to really be firm in your boundaries. You have to, you know, hold the line. You have to have the right consequences, you have to have the right rewards. And all these things that just seemed like, well, I think I'm doing what everybody else is doing, and I'm just not getting the same results. And I don't think that this is, you know, this is.

3:19 Speaker B: The challenge that my child has, isn't necessarily just a behavior challenge. It's like, what's going on, that layer underneath. And that just was a level that I didn't think I wasn't getting a lot of support for. And I really just felt, like, kind of lost and alone and trying to figure out, like, what's going on here? What am I missing? Am I just doing something wrong as a parent? And it really just took me years of, you know, trying different things, reading different things, finding different resources to start to kind of figure out it really is just about meeting my child where he is, trying to understand things that he couldn't necessarily communicate with me at the time.

3:59 Speaker B: You know, he's. As he gets older, he's better and better at it, but it's. It's not always easy still. And, you know, kind of throwing out my expectations and what I was kind of taught to believe it should be the way that you. You know, a lot of parenting advice is kind of like A plus B equals C. You just kind of do it, and this is the result you get. And that just didn't seem to be working for us, so really just had to figure out our own path and figure out how to kind of meet my child where he was.

4:28 Speaker A: I. You know, I think as you go into parenthood, I have a typical child. Filming child is my first. And I think that there's a lot of these assumptions that, you know, if we just understand human development enough, that's. That's good enough. Right. If I can understand it conceptually enough, then that just is good enough. And I think that obviously my. My second, my. My second and third child radically shifted that foundational understanding for me and made me realize that there was ground underneath these figures.

4:57 Speaker A: Right. They were showing me things, but what's underneath that?

Shifting Perspectives: Kids Do Well If They Can

5:01 Speaker B: Right.

5:01 Speaker A: You know, and I know that you've shared that, you know, that same lens, like, applied to your own child, and it changed the way that you parented through fundamentally understanding that what people might assume that they need is not what they actually need.

5:15 Speaker B: Right, right, right. Yeah. And I think for me, you know, reading. The one kind of big shift for me in particular was reading Ross Greene's book the Explosive Child, which I talk about all the time. And I know hopefully he's pretty well known in your community as well, but, you know, he has this concept of kids do well if they can.

5:34 Speaker A: Yes.

5:35 Speaker B: To me, that changed everything because I. I could see that my son, you know, I could see my son's heart and his soul, and he's a wonderful, amazing, creative, kind, you know, just wonderful, wonderful kid. But then there would be these behaviors that were just constantly getting in the way. And I didn't want him to be defined by those behaviors. But a lot of traditional advice, that's. That's all it was aimed at, was the behaviors and kind of wanted. Almost wanted me to believe that he was being manipulative or, you know, trying.

6:04 Speaker B: Trying to get one over on me and all these things that just didn't feel right. And reading that book and kind of understanding, shifting my understanding to, to say, like, if. If these behaviors are constantly happening, like if your child is constantly struggling with some of these things, something's getting in their way, you know, because kids want to do well, just like we as adults want to do well. We don't want to go around being jerks to everyone are the same. And so it kind of, A, it took the pressure off me to be like, well, if you just did it right as a parent, you wouldn't.

6:36 Speaker B: Your child wouldn't be acting this way, because that's simply not true. And B, it allowed me to really just see.

Believing Your Child and Trusting Your Observations

6:43 Speaker B: Look more curiously at what was actually going on and look at him as someone who is struggling with certain skills or certain, you know, coping mechanisms that he hadn't developed yet, and then work with him, kind of be on his side rather than working against him, which is how it felt a lot of the time.

7:00 Speaker A: Yeah, I think another, you know, quote. I don't even know where this comes from, but when people show you who they are, believe them. Like, I always look at my. My younger two and I think, okay, I. I'm in. I'm firmly planted in reality right now. They're showing me who they are, right? They're communicating something about who they are. I'm going to believe them. I'm going to believe them on this because I. And I think that sounds. It's so Milly when you say it out loud because you think, obviously, but we, we've been culturally sort of unbeknownst to us, like, conditioned to not accept that when it doesn't fit a typical trajectory.

7:33 Speaker B: Absolutely.

7:34 Speaker A: And, you know, over time, myself, and I was doing this, I actually did this, I think, when I was pregnant with my first, which is a typically developing teenager. We become collectors of all this data. Right. And this, all this, like, exorbitant amount of information. I don't even think I realized I was doing it, to be completely honest, until having Milly and Mac made me go, oh, wow, I, I'm. I'm logging so much internally. How can I start to record this and sense, you know, have some meaning to this and these countless variables?

Technology, Data Overload, and Optimization

8:04 Speaker A: How do you think technology, you know, can help recognize those patterns without which. Which is something I am deeply accused of and to, to be fair, rightly so. Trying to optimize all the time.

8:15 Speaker B: Yeah, that's such a great question because, I mean, I have worked in technology for, you know, well over a decade now, and I have a very mixed, mixed feelings about it, despite, you know, having created this app. Because we do have this tendency as a culture to just optimize everything. You know, I've been, I have a smartwatch. I've been tracking my sleep for years, and I have no idea what I've learned from it. Right. Like, what do I, you know, do I do anything differently? Am I a better sleeper now?

8:41 Speaker B: No. So I think we, we have this idea that if we just, you know, put all the data down, we're going to understand everything. And. Well, a, I don't think that, that, you know, there's, there's cases where that may be true. There's other cases where it may not. But B, you know, as parents of autistic kids or kids with ADHD or just any complex child, right. We are working hard already. We're exhausted. Like, we don't have time to build an elaborate spreadsheet of every single, you know, meltdown, every, Everything they ate or didn't eat or whatever it is.

9:11 Speaker B: And, you know, I've been, I've been asked to track things by various, you know, healthcare professionals over time. And it's just, it's really hard to actually do it.

How Neuroparent's Check-In Feature Works

9:19 Speaker B: And so what I try to do with neuroparent, and it's something I think I've. We've done well so far, but I still want to get better at it, is to make it not feel like work to be able to kind of track patterns of what's going on with your child. So the, the kind of basis of neuroparent is something called, we call it check in. And all it is, is you can tap, you know, tap the microphone and just talk into your phone about, or, you know, type if you want, but you just say a few words about what's going on.

9:46 Speaker B: And it might be something in the moment, like maybe there is a meltdown that your child's having. You're trying to kind of figure out how to respond to it. Or Maybe it's just 30 seconds at the end of the day where you're just kind of stream of consciousness talking about what happened. And it's literally just 30 seconds. And, and then, you know, the app kind of takes, takes the reins of that data then. And then over time, as you start to log more and more, it'll find patterns for you. So it's not looking at like every morsel of food that was eaten over each day, but it's more looking for bigger themes.

10:18 Speaker B: And what are the things, like the things that you were talking about earlier that we're all logging in our heads, but it takes up so much space. It's like, what are the things that really help this specific child? What are the things that make things more challenging for this specific child?

Outsourcing Mental Load and Staying Regulated

10:34 Speaker B: Like where, you know, what are the types of strategies that we use at parent as parents that seem to backfire and maybe we should kind of pull back on those or what are the things that really work? And so it starts to kind of pull those things out where we all have all the data in our heads, but like, we're so in the weeds every day and we're so exhausted, it's hard to sometimes put those pieces together. And so that's what we're trying to do.

10:58 Speaker A: There's, you know, I, I studied PR and advertising in college and learned a lot about Marshall McLuhan, who's like the grandfather of PR, right. And he talks so much. He wrote a book, you know, the Medium is the massage in the 1960s. And you know, the, the, the irony that his book got misprinted as massage. But it is so interesting to me because he discussed how we were not supposed to process all this information that's going to be coming at us. And I think what you're saying here is that we are, we're doing exactly.

11:28 Speaker A: We're trying to process all this information that we are holding. And we should feel freed to be able to outsource this and what a great use of technology to outsource all that is stirring in us. You know, from a regulatory, from a regulatory standpoint, I believe that the best of parents, of us of neurodivergent children, we parent best when we're regulated. So when we can take all of that and get that through technology, like neuroparent, it is actually regulating for not only you, but will be a byproduct for your child as well.

11:59 Speaker B: Sorry, yeah, you broke up for a second at the end there, but I think, Yeah, I think I heard what you said. And it's actually a couple of things really interesting there.

Parents as Experts and the Value of Validation

12:08 Speaker B: Like, one is just in terms of like, out, you know, we're outsourcing some of the. It's like the memory, almost the memory of keeping track and putting it all together. But we as parents, and I firmly believe this and you know, is as our kids parents, we are the experts in our kids. Like, right. Like, we know them better than anyone. And, and you know, the app is never going to have that. You know, it only knows what we tell. Tell it, and then it kind of just synthesizes it. The other interesting thing about this is that what I actually hear from our users of the app is that one of the things they find most valuable, it's like, yes, it helps them understand their children better and feel more connected and as it kind of gives them strategies that, that are helpful in the moment, but also it's helps them feel validated and reassured and just, you know, gives them that confidence that, okay, we're off the right path, you are working really hard, you know your kid best, and you're, you know, you know, their best supporter.

13:05 Speaker B: And it's okay for you to feel exhausted or tired or angry right now, but, you know, you're doing the best you can. And so all of that, that's kind of built into the overall tone and kind of how the app works is one of the things that parents say that's most valuable to them because we just don't hear it that much. Right. Like, we don't get that validation. A lot of the work that we do as parents of neurodivergent kids is really invisible to the outside world.

Advocacy, Confidence, and Using Data to Empower Parents

13:31 Speaker A: Or, you know, I think that. And I, you know, working in advocacy, I know that there's physical, you know, advocates that go into any situation with a parent of a child that's medically complex in any, in any which. But what I also often do for, I do a lot of coaching for IEP planning is that you know, I probably could advocate best for a neurodivergent child in a different family better than a typical parent, but I will never do it to the degree in which I can coach you to do it for your child.

13:59 Speaker B: Right.

14:00 Speaker A: And I think that it's a very similar thing that you're talking about here, is that if we can get validation that what you actually know is better than anyone else can and consistently build upon that, there's no, there's no downside to that. There's zero.

14:15 Speaker B: That's absolutely right. I love that because I think, you know, with advocacy, it's, it's very similar. Right. Where it's applicable to, I think, so many different places where you as a parent have this expertise and you have power, you know, you have the ability to exercise your rights and to, and to make your voice heard, but we often don't realize that, especially in the school setting, but then in other settings as well. And so having that confidence and really believing that in what we're seeing in our kids and what matters for our kids is, you know, one of the most valuable things we can do for our kids because then we use that to advocate.

14:48 Speaker A: We can, as parents, learn to identify from our own data points how to do that better. And I think that this is a wonderful, you know, just an incredible app to do that. We all want to get better. Let's, let's use what's available to do that effectively and save energy, too. Let's get, let's be serious here. We use a lot of energy. We, we are not, we are not robots. We are not artificial intelligence. You know, we have a limited amount of energy, and I think that things like this really, really help conserve where we can.

15:17 Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I, I, yeah. I hope that using the app almost feels like a form of, to use a catchphrase, self care, because it is, it is really, it's, it's a place where you can kind of put things, or you could, you know, you could get things off your mind. You can, you can kind of store it away and know that it's, it's tracked, it's there so that you're not going to forget about it. You know, it just takes a load off of your, off of your mind, hopefully.

Vision for Neuroparent Across the Parenting Journey

15:39 Speaker A: Totally. So, Allison, when you think about neuroparent, you know, down the road, what, what do you hope changes for the parent who might feel like, I'm in the beginning of this journey, like, I've got a toddler who might be diagnosed with something, or I'm have A child in middle school got, just got diagnosed neurodivergent.

15:57 Speaker B: Yeah. I think the two things that I really focus on as I'm working on neuroparent are parents feeling a sense of confidence about their parenting and parents feeling connected to their kids, which comes kind of through understanding. So I think for a lot of parents on the like long and winding journey of raising a neurodivergent child, there's the first, the first part is really, I think in some ways it's the hardest or it's the most abrupt where you, you go, you have to kind of go through this mental shift of like relearning everything you thought you knew.

16:29 Speaker B: And I think that's when perhaps neuro parent can be most useful in kind of in giving you the, the confidence and validation on as you're going on this path, on the right path. But it really, you know, can be valuable across the, the lifespan. And we have users of, who have, you know, kids that have just been diagnosed, users that have teenagers who've been diagnosed forever and. But the main thing is to help parents feel more confident in what they're doing and be able to just feel like they understand their kids better and are better, better able to support their kids and where they're going.

17:05 Speaker A: Well, that is it. It's such a gift that you, that you created this.

Closing Thoughts and Gratitude

17:08 Speaker A: Again, I think that in my own work and it sounds like yours too, I think being in service to other mothers and caregivers and parents in situations where they're parenting a child, where they're trying to understand and be the best version of a parent for their child, that might be exhi. Neurodiverse traits is a gift to the community. I think that we are all here to use our skills to serve others and I hope to do it here on instones to use it as a platform for products and services like you. And I just, I keep coming back in my head to that.

17:39 Speaker A: You know, we're already doing so much, an extraordinary amount of this observing. You know, we shouldn't have to hold all that information in our heads. And if we can use this conversation to. It's not a promise that AI is going to, you know, somehow know our children better than we are. But it's going to help gain such clarity on what I we are, I am seeing and what's already been noticed by you. And I love just the distinction that we talked about today. It's not to solve our children, it's to remain curious about them, which is something that I'm always fundamentally anchored in is staying curious.

18:13 Speaker A: And sometimes, you know, Inchton's are what you know, they're so infinitesimally small, but if you can track those over time, you might be able to see what's emerged from that. So Allison, thank you so much for helping parents trust what they are seeing and giving that knowledge somewhere to live through through neuroparent. I will be linking everything about Neuro parent in the episode summary here. And Allison, thank you again today for being here on the Inch Sense podcast.

18:40 Speaker B: Thanks for having me.

18:41 Speaker A: All right, until next time, everyone take care.