Episode 56- Benefits of Reiki for Children with Sophie Shaw

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the kids sleep show, where we help tired parents from around the world to get their children to fall asleep independently, sleep through the night and build healthy sleep habits for life. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz. Now let’s sleep together. All right, good afternoon. Thanks, everyone for tuning in to the kids sleep show. I am excited to be here today with a special guest joining me from across the pond over in the UK, Miss Sophie Shah, and she is going to be here to talk all things in the parenting realm. She is a master Reiki teacher and is working with clients, especially new moms. And I’m going to give her a chance to introduce herself and tell you a little bit more about the work that she does and the practice that she has today.
Hi, Courtney. Thank you. I’m Yes, I’m a hypnotherapist and I’m a Reiki Master Teacher. As you can tell by my accent. I’m British. I live in Norfolk, which is in the East of England, and I work with people who are local. I also work with people online. And as you mentioned, I work my the main focus of my work is on supporting exhausted mums. So I think it sort of ties in very nicely with what you’re doing.
And I and you just launched a book, right? Correct, correct?
Yeah,
well, it’s a little bit about that.
So I wrote a book, I am a single mom of a neurodiverse child. He’s 12. I originally launched the book last year. It’s called the hair on the moon. And it is intended to help anxious children. And I wrote it with him in mind because he suffers quite a lot with anxiety and depression. And there was nothing for his age group last year was about 1011. There was not an awful lot for his age group on the market, there was an awful lot of stuff that was aimed at younger kids, very kind of cutesy. And he was too old for that. But he was too young for the you know, the more teen focused stuff. So I wrote the hair and the moon to be a very calming fable. I was raised on Aesop’s Fables and Watership Down, and beautiful, timeless tales, you know, told in the natural world. And I wanted something that was going to be incredibly soothing, calming, and easing for children, and just to gently introduce them to the ideas of mindful meditation. And so far, what I’ve discovered is that it’s very soothing for children and their parents and anxious adults and people of all ages.
I would absolutely agree with you on a personal note, I in March, when everything started kind of happening, my son, you know, all of a sudden, he was six. And you know, he’s in kindergarten, and all of a sudden schools done, right. And he’s like, wait a minute, where are my friends? Where are these things that I’m used to doing and all the sports and activity and fun and I was pretty sick. About a year and a half, almost two years ago, now had my stomach removed. I had a double mastectomy, like I had a whole bunch of stuff going on from cancer and my son equates the word sick to mommy’s gonna die, right? And so, personally, it was kind of this like shock to him when he starts hearing the word sick that he’s like, Oh my gosh, are you gonna die? Am I gonna die is ever gonna die. So he developed anxiety around bedtime, and I’m a pediatric sleep specialist, like you go to bed and you’re really good at it, right? Like, that’s the one thing I knew I did really well. Like it’s because it was their foundation. And so when this like challenge of him going to bed for the fear of like, mommy not being there, when you wake up creeped in, it was like, This is new. And it’s heartbreaking as a parent, like I find my son sleeping on the steps, because he’d want to be close to me, but he didn’t want to come down or he come down three or four times. And like I said, for six years, he slept well through the night, you know, now he’s coming down, like, I just wanted to and it was never I wanted to check you were here it was I wanted to, I forgot my book or something, you don’t grab it, you know, just to see that I was there. And it got to the point where even still to this day, it’s October and he we still basically put him down and go into our bedroom and I read or I do some work or you know, I watched a little TV we’re not big TV people in the bedroom. But we’ve sort of adapted our like, post kid going to sleep activities, even on the weekends because he is a better person and goes down much easier and frankly just doesn’t have the fear that I’m not going to be there like nobody wants to as a parent to like that’s a heavy burden man like, nobody wants to feel that and we developed using a little product called as animal and my friend Anna develop this little mindset turtle. It’s a device free meditation device for kids and we do it every night. And as a parent one of the things you mentioned was like, I benefit from mindfulness and meditation as well right like I like so I look forward to it just as much as my kids do now. Yeah, put themselves to sleep to calm, not necessarily to sleep but just to calm during bedtime like my kids will go from jumping off the bunk bed, playing basketball to Like we’re going to do are my husband calls them ablutions. But we do our little mindset. And it’s, you know, anywhere from kind of six minutes to 12 minutes, depending on which one you pick. And there’s nine different ones. And if we’re feeling a certain way, like I picked certain ones certain nights, and, you know, really, I think I now benefit equally as my children do. So I’d love your perspective on that, especially I’m sure you do some things with your son around mindfulness and meditation. And obviously, with the background as a hypnotherapist, you know, I was hypnotized, back in my younger days around sports and some challenges I had, you know, in my professional kind of sports career. But, you know, I think that the hypnotherapy too, is tapping into the subconscious, which is something we do a lot of, right. So I would love just thoughts on how you work with your son. And anxiety and depression is way on the rise right now for kids of all ages, because they’re in this crazy world of difference and turn a bout of your perspective on that.
Yeah, it’s hugely on the rise, and I can absolutely mirror your experience My son has, because he has always experienced anxiety and depression. He’s never been a brilliant sleeper. But pre lockdown, we’ve mostly got it sorted. But now his separation anxiety has become so extreme that at the moment, he’s sleeping on a mattress on the floor next to my bed. And when I put him down for the evening, I have to stay in the room with him. So I have my laptop, I do all the work that I have to do in the evening. And that’s that’s, you know, I don’t intend that to be a permanent situation. But it’s what we’ve had to do what I’ve discovered with the book, and there’s an audio book as well, which as a hypnotherapist I have narrated. And I have found that that combination is very, very powerful in soothing the children and the parents because parents trying, as I’m sure you’ve discovered parents trying to get a difficult child to sleep will start to experience anxiety around bedtime themselves. And then it kind of feeds on itself feeds off itself. So the parents anxiety around bedtime feeds the child’s anxiety around bedtime, and it just snowballs. And I think so.
Home breeds calm and that
Yeah. Which is you know, it’s easier said than done, because it can be incredibly stressful. And as a hypnotherapist, what I tried to do was use very gently hypnotic language in the book in order to produce a state of calm, you know, without being too heavy about it, because obviously, you know, you can’t put in subliminal affirmations and all that kind of stuff without there being a permission. And I work in a very permissive and cooperative way with my clients.
But talk a little bit about that from you know, the the work you do in the hypnotherapy space, the Reiki space, like Reiki, for me is something that I’m just learning about a little bit more, frankly, you know, I was always big in, you know, I touched meditation, healing, massage, you know, reflexology, things like that. But the Reiki side of it, like I’m just starting to kind of understand a bit more the healing power of, you know, working different parts of the body and such and learning about the chakra is like, I’m trying to be a better version of my own self. Right. So I guess it’s good. I’m educating myself in some capacity there. But, you know, talk a little bit about that, and kind of the hypnotherapy side and then the Reiki side, because I think, you know, both could be potentially foreign to parents,
I’m sure and an actual fact most people are only just beginning to understand what Reiki is, it’s only just being accepted into the mainstream. We have the largest teaching hospital in the UK in London at the moment, is currently doing a Reiki program called Reiki medic care where frontline doctors and nurses are receiving Reiki and they’re already reporting that it’s massively reducing their stress and anxiety. Reiki was the first thing that I trained in 11 years ago. And it’s, as you say, it is an energy healing therapy. But when you describe it, it sounds completely mad. But when you when you experience it, what it does is produce a very profound sense of peace. It allows you to release things that you’ve been hanging on to sometimes for years, just to let go of old stuck energy. And what happens is a very profound sense of relaxation of calm and peace that lasts well beyond the session. And they’ve, you know, had extremely profound sessions with clients where they’ve been able to release something that they you know, from their childhood, you know, things that they’ve been hanging on to for years and years. That works in a very instinctive way. A very non cerebral way to hypnotherapy is a bit more technical. hypnotherapy is just like a guided meditation only using slightly more specific language to produce a very de dreamy, relax, relaxed sort of state that allows people to, without even trying just to change the way they think and feel about things. And when you change the way you think about something, the feelings that you have around it automatically change. And the point about all of it is that it’s just effortless. It’s all very soothing, calming and effortless. I’m very powerful.
I’m reading a book right now on tapping into the subconscious. And I’ve tried to be more mindful, because I think I do need to rewire some things even personally, you know, and I want to be the best parent, I want to be the best entrepreneur want to be the best parenting coach, like I want to be all the best to things. And I’m, frankly, not being the best version of myself right now. Yes, it’s like trying to balance all that. And I think to your point, rewire certain things that you know, that subconscious, that the hypnosis, the meditation, like the calming, like the focus on your present, focus on the present, focus on the present, like, that’s what I constantly tell myself, like I committed to doing yoga four days a week. And for me, that’s where I focus on my breath. It’s the only time in my day I focus on my breath, aside from my meditations at that time, right. But for those 45 minutes that I do yoga, four times a week, focusing on my breath, and I leave there feeling an immediate sense of calm, you know, and so it’s it’s amazing when you focus on that subconscious level and like what you’re telling yourself but emulates out into the world, you know, as a tired parent, as they over you know, overworked doctor in a hospital right on the frontlines of all of this, like that stress, anxiety and build up, it just weighs you down, and sometimes like kind of, like bricks on a book bag, and they just keep piling on the bricks, you know.
So it’s immense pressure. And I think Nobody puts more pressure on us than we put on ourselves. pressure on ourselves, you know, especially as mothers, I have an old friend who said to me, when you give birth, you give birth to guilt. And I think the guilt of not being able to do everything, and the pressure that we place on ourselves to be the best parent to be able to, to work and to keep house and to produce incredibly well adjusted children, and feed them organic food and recycle and make sure you’re campaigning for the right things. And oh my goodness, me, it’s just particularly in the middle of a pandemic. Much of the work that I’m having to do with parents is just getting them to dial down their expectations and take the pressure off themselves, because their, their expectations of themselves are completely unrealistic. And it’s it’s too harsh and not compassionate. Yeah, no, I,
I completely agree. I had a, you know, when I, when I first had my son, I was eight weeks, eight weeks postpartum, and I had like almost a mental breakdown in the car with my husband, because I’m like, I’m still in corporate America working a pretty high level job as a marketing executive. I was trying to be the perfect wife, the perfect boss, the perfect milker from nursing and thought milk was gonna shoot out every orifice and latch on and it was gonna be a beautiful thing. It was not,
no say,
oh, like, and you’re trying to do all the things. I’m like, the grass has to get cut, the house has to be cleaned, the groceries have to be delivered. We’re gonna have salad on our plate first every night with a beautiful, you know, meat potato starch, like, you know what I mean? It’s like, what the hell? Who cares? Absolutely. You know, and my husband literally, you know, I always joke, you save your marriage with an $8 whiteboard. But we were driving to the beach and I’m like, Adam, I want to crumble. I want to drive my car off a bridge. I am not good at parenting. It’s the only job I’ve ever sucked at. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I’m crumbling. And he’s like, Where do you get a whiteboard? And I thought at the time, I remember glaring at him wanting to punch him in the face and say, get a whiteboard. Like I’m ready to drive off the bridge in Conshohocken, you’re telling me to get a whiteboard. And it literally was the best investment I ever made. Get an $8 whiteboard, put it on the fridge and say, here’s what I need help with, whether it’s from your kids, whether it’s from your spouse, I know you have a super cat, right? Like maybe he helps. You know, but like put it on the whiteboard. And that’s what I did. I basically listed on the whiteboard, you know, kids laundry, our laundry, clean the house, cut the grass, we’d go grocery shopping, you know, change the, you know, the ice diapers, out of the, whatever the heck it was at the time, you know, sterilize my pump parts, like, you know, it could be really anything. Give me a chance to go to the gym twice a week, right Check, check right Like, putting those things down, and then it allowed my husband to come home from work and go, how can I help here?
Great.
How can I help here even with my kids, like we have charts downstairs and it’s not a reward system. It’s these are the expectations of your job in this house, right? Yeah, well, my son likes to do dishes, we probably waste a little bit of water. So I’m trying to teach him that, but he wants to help with doing the dishes. So great. Your job is dishes twice a week. Here’s your two things, right, like empowering kids to help with the load. You know, and my daughter likes to do laundry. And so I’m like, Alright, put your laundry away. Now her she’s four. So she just shoves it in the drawers, but we don’t have that much clothing that matters. Like, put your little spandex in the drawer. I don’t care if they’re folding, automated. Air and I don’t want to touch it, right. So it’s like I’m trying to empower them. But also it’s like put your laundry away cool. Alright, laundry night, you know, so we put a dance music I just bought an Alexa yesterday. It’s Prime Day here in the US. So everything’s on sale. So I bought a an Alexa for upstairs for 20 bucks. And I could just be like, Alexa, play dance music, and then we could have a dance party put the laundry away. Yeah, lovely. Yeah, I
think it’s also really important not just because it’s important for them to know how to, you know, everything that’s required to run a house, but also that they get the understanding that nobody is a robot, and that you are not some kind of superhuman, who is able to do everything. So when we, you know, when we allow our children to see our emotional vulnerability, when we allow our children to see us, you know, say I need help, I can’t do it, or you’re going to have to pitch in, I think it’s really important for them to see, you know, the reality of emotion for them to see that people are frail, they’re not perfect, that they have them, you know, their their boiling point that you know, the tipping point where they snap, and then to see their parent, getting it back together. Yeah, I think nothing could be more more beneficial to them than to see somebody not handling something beautifully. And then bringing it back. Yeah, it shows the full, honest spectrum of, of emotion. And I think that’s incredibly important for children.
And I think it’s that foundation that we set as parents, like kids emulate our behavior, they emulate our personalities, they emulate our feelings at the point, right? Like, if you’re anxious, they’re anxious, if you’re calm, they’re calm, like, so it’s trying to be calm in a moment, sometimes where you just want to be like, Ah, you know, and it’s like, okay, let’s talk a little bit about the decision. Like, you know, can you tell me why you chose to, you know, jump off the couch onto a pillow that slid across the floor that you banged your head into that does, you know, did that seem like a good tool, you know, like, it’s gonna be like I told you, I told you like not to do that, right. You know, and it can be with anything. It’s just trying to be, I think, like, balanced in our approach to parenting, but doing it in a way that is supportive of our kids. Like I was present with my kids since March. I was here all day, I was with you. I we spent morning noon and night together every day. I wasn’t present. I was here, you know. So it’s like, I have now taken a step back and sort of checked myself and said, like, I may have been here with you all day and felt like I owed myself like I need an hour. And I’m like, they don’t get an hour they’ve had this dumpster fire situation placed on them. Like they need an hour, right? You know, so I sort of checked my own self. And that’s why I was like, Alright, I gotta do some, like mindset work on myself. Because like, I’m not the best version of a parent, I want to be in all aspects. Like I’m supporting my clients beautifully. supporting my husband beautifully. I am not the best version of myself for me, right? Kids have everything they need. My husband has everything they need. My clients have everything they need, I don’t have everything I need, you know that and you’re the best mums, you know, yeah.
And as moms, we tend to put ourselves right at the bottom of the list. We always put our children first or our partners first or you know, our careers first or the house. First. We one of the things that I work most with clients is is prioritizing their needs, because you cannot pour from an empty cup. Right? You know, some of the women who come to see me have put so much pressure on themselves. They have so poor such poor boundaries in terms of saying no, that they are almost burnt out, if not completely burnt out. And the work that I do with them creates a very gentle, supporting, compassionate, non judgmental space for them to come in and rant and rave and cry and weep and just be utterly, utterly exhausted. And then for me to be able to guide them through self forgiveness, self acceptance, or finding ways for them to get the help and support that they need, which usually involves communion Locating more clearly with a partner, and so beautiful that you had that whiteboard idea, because what a fantastic simple and clear way of communicating your needs to somebody else and and that he was open to that is wonderful.
Yeah, yeah, it was so funny because it was such a thing at the time, I was like a whiteboard, you think that’s gonna do it. And then I was like, look at your whiteboard. So like, go on Amazon that, you know, we were driving to the beach on a Friday night, I ordered it on Amazon, we came home Sunday, it was there. And I was like, that’s your whiteboard. So I like literally put everything on it, that whole week was just like, high high fived myself, like, I got this now, you know, like, it’s just Brent, this like, fresh sense of calm to, frankly, a very chaotic situation, you know, so. So that was beautiful and amazing. And you know, and not every family I think is open to be this kumaon communication, like, they just may not be open to it. And I think you know, seeking out help and support from folks like yourself, and really trying to get to the root of like, Okay, what am I putting too much pressure on myself to do? Yeah, and what things can we leave, because you cannot pour from an empty cup I talk to my clients about all the time because they’re often chronically sleep deprived. I work with clients all over the world, who have children that do not sleep well. And when they don’t sleep well, mom doesn’t sleep well. And then, you know, you’re both flat out just pooped. And you’re not the best version of yourself. You know, it’s, I was reading a something the other day, and they said, essentially, in a new statistic, that getting less than five hours of sleep a night is the equivalent to being legally intoxicated. Yes. You know, and so it’s like, well, nobody says, you know, gosh, my employees awesome. They are drunk every day at the office. Like, nobody says that, you know, but now your mind is working with, right? So it’s really trying to balance like, what things can I control? And what can I change with our family? I couldn’t, I’m not a good teacher. I recognize that. I don’t want to be a teacher. I didn’t go into school to be a teacher. And I couldn’t control it. And you know, my father in law made a comment to me that was like, You need to be nicer to your kids this summer. And I’m like, Larry, you have no idea what it’s been like since March.
Well, that would be an hour straight out the door for the father in law for me. That’d be like, Okay, bye, Larry. Thanks.
I said nothing. I went upstairs because I felt myself crumbling. And I legit cried myself to sleep for six hours my husband was going on. My kids were like, why is mommy crying? I’m like, I broke my bracelet. You know, like, I just made something up because I just saw and sobbed and sobbed. And I drove home at four o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t sleep, I was just distraught. Like, I am not being the best version of myself. And I don’t know how to fix this. Like we’re in the middle of an epidemic. And I’m trying to do all the things that my husband’s not here he works full time as a controller of a company that’s still in the office. So they’re essential employee, you know, so it was just me taking on all this load. And I’m trying to run my own business and stuff, you know, things everybody’s doing. And I basically drove home at four in the morning stopped, I called my girlfriend in Brisbane, because I knew she would chat with a fellow sleep consultant friend of mine, and I was just sobbing the whole way home and was like, What can I control? What can I control? Like, I can control whether you go to public school or private school, I literally got home emailed the three or four Catholic schools around us was like, do you have availability? I emailed the private school that was down the road, do you have availability, that Monday, I had, like four phone calls, this parish that we belong to had availability, and I was like, great, you’re going to Catholic school, you know. And, like the second I made that choice for our family, because they were planning to go in school five days, they would get good instruction, my son could have normalcy, frankly, for him, because he’s freaked out about mommy dying, like I want to do to go back to normal as quickly as I could to mitigate some of the anxiety he was facing. And I tell you a weight came right off of me, Sophie, like, I made the choice. My husband was like, I don’t know, if I’m comfortable with this and Catholic school stuff, then you know, we’re gonna do honey, we’re gonna co parent three days a week, you’re gonna work from home. And then next week, two days, and this is how it’s gonna be. And he’s like, no Catholic school. Sounds great.
To think about this, and
it’s so bad for grand Cool. All right, sign him up, you know. So it was just one of those where for us that worked. And I get I just had to take control of this situation and go, what in this can I control? Yeah, make the decision for our family and move forward with it. And it’s been beautiful there. Yeah. That wonderful availability to do that right now. But that was what worked in our home. It was like, I could control this because I recognize that that was the source of my negativity. Yeah, I took action on it as the best I could.
And that actually, I think, is really key for all of us as well. We’re not when I’m treating people for anxiety and depression. One of the things that comes up really frequently is control and the amount of anxiety that is produced by attempting to control everything in our environment, particularly when we have a global event which is absolutely beyond our control. That that’s why I think anxiety He is ramping up so, so much because, you know, we are used to being more or less in control of what happens to us. And at the moment, the control is being handed to higher powers, most of whom we don’t really trust. I mean, you said it’s a dumpster fire over there is not much better over here. And it’s, it’s really hard to hand over control to people that, you know, you don’t necessarily feel are doing the right thing. And even if you did believe that they were doing the right thing, nevertheless, you know, that the highest power is, is the is the virus, it’s gonna do whatever it’s gonna do, we can’t stop it or change it, you know. So learning to bring back your expectations to really peel them back to what little things can I control, I control my breathing, I can control how much time I spend working on my stuff, I can control what I choose to consume in terms of social media or news media, I can choose to control, you know, how many hours I’m putting in at work, or I can control small things. And learning when it is, you know, these extreme circumstances to to, to lessen your burden to lessen your load. And be okay with it.
I think that’s super important. And talk to me a little bit about like with your son, right? I mean, there is anxiety there is depression and more in the middle of a pandemic, like, how do you explain to a 10 year old? The world is different right now, right? For someone who’s already a little bit anxious, a little bit scared, sometimes sad, and that’s okay. Right? Like, how do you explain to a child and work with children to help them understand that, like, it’s still going to be okay, I think all of our kids are a little scared right now. Yeah. Regardless, if you have, you know, something diagnosed or not, like everybody’s, oh, think a little freaked out, like walk around masks right now, you know, yeah, that the world is different, you know? And how do you, I would say, in your personal like, situation, like, how do you balance that, right? You have this professional understanding of what you do for the parents that you support and help? And then you bring it home? You’re like, how do I help? You? Right?
Yeah, and you know, it’s not the same. Because I’m not my son’s therapist, I’m his mom. So I’m his punch back. And that is tough. Particularly when you’re a single mom, there isn’t anybody else there to kind of share the load with or, you know, to pick up when you are, you know, to tag team with when you’re just done in. So, my policy, I mean, my son’s 12 now, so he has a slightly, you know, higher level of maturity than when he was 10. And it, my policy has always been with him. Total honesty, total truth telling, but balanced. So I’m not going to tell him that the world is a dumpster fire at the moment, I’m going to tell him, yes, there’s stuff going on. And these are the things that we need to do to be careful. And these are the things that we need to do to, to, to be aware of it. We’re quite lucky here in Norfolk and East of England that we haven’t had, we haven’t been too badly hit. But it is around, there have been two cases in his school. And all of that produces definite fears and anxiety. So it’s just about trying to, for myself, trying to get myself in a space of non anxiety about the virus. And the way that I do that, which is not going to fit with everybody. But the way that I do that is I try and consume almost no news media, and very little social media on the subject. Because what sets my anxiety off is the the political division, which is ridiculous given that it’s not a political issue, but it has been turned into one the division in the community, so people arguing with one another, the intolerance and the the, the the binary kind of set mindset that sets my anxiety off. So I just, I just don’t consume it as much as possible. I get the essential information. I communicate that to him in an honest and in a very balanced way. And hopefully, that gives him a kind of a realistic view of what’s going on. Things are weird, things are different. It’s going to be okay. We’re probably not going to get all of the homework done that you’re supposed to do. And we just have to be okay with that for the time being.
Well, that’s all I remember, in the spring. I told my son’s teacher I was like, Look, this is how it’s going to go mountain math. Not happening. You know, you’re gonna have great I didn’t understand it. I’m like, this is ridiculous. Like I did organic chemistry in high school, and I can’t figure out first grade mount math. You know what, I don’t care. You’re gonna do what works for you add two plus two. Cool, you’re good. I don’t care if you get it from climbing. In a mountain or using your fingers, right, totally, and it was just like, you have to be okay with that. And that’s why I’m like, Look, I’m working full time, I’m in between seven houses in the spring trying to get somebody to help me on every day because I’m alone and still trying to work. And, you know, when I was like, my father in law’s 75, he can’t turn a computer on my dad is, you know, unable to basically power his phone to take a selfie, you know, so it’s like, this is what I’m dealing with. And so, here’s what it’s gonna be, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do some worksheets, and I’ll submit them so that, you know, he’s learning but like, that’s what we got. And she’s like, Yeah, that’s great. You know? And it was like, it is what it is,
you know? And that’s okay. Yeah, exactly. I think we just have to adjust our expectations and be far, far less hard on ourselves, and far more compassionate, and Kinder. I absolutely. You know, the thing with homeschooling, as well as this isn’t homeschooling what we were doing over the summer, and what we may end up having to do for a few weeks coming up in the UK Anyway, you know, it’s not homeschooling homeschooling is, for one thing, you’re not allowed to work full time when you’re a home schooler. So your entire career is focused towards children. And that’s not the case for most parents. When you’re homeschooling in a normal situation, you’re going on day trips, and you’re mixing with other children, and you’re socializing, and you know, you’re tag teaming with other moms. That’s not what we’re doing. What we have been doing is crisis management. And in those situations, and that’s the same when you’re parenting a neurodiverse. Child, you’re you’re standards are different. And you have to just be okay with that and just say, we are not going to be able to achieve what we might achieve under normal circumstances. So do the best you can, and and let yourself off the hook for the rest.
Yeah, give yourself a little grace. I yeah, I totally agree with that. Well, I would love for you to take a few minutes and tell folks, where can they get the book, because I’m going to order a copy for my own child. He’s also learning to read. So I think it’ll be good practice. Wonderful. And I certainly love supporting small businesses, much like yourself. So you know, I’m all for that. But take a few minutes and tell folks where they can reach you. I know that you are obviously, over in the UK. So you know, how do you work with families? Can you work with somebody from the states if they wanted to work with you? You know, what does it look like? Talk to us a little bit about that more folks can find you Sophie,
the best place to find me is through my website, which is Sophie short.co.uk. And yes, I do. And I also have a Facebook page and my Facebook page is at Sophie shore heels. And I try through my mailing list through my Facebook page through my website and release as much free resources as I possibly can to support people. And I do work with people in the States and in Australia. Like this. We just have chats over video over zoom and you know, I do some wonderful hypnotherapeutic sessions with people some distant healing Reiki, it all blends very beautifully together. So one thing I found about Reiki and hypnotherapy. So yeah, you can get the book through my website. So for sure code at UK forward slash books. Or you can get it from Amazon in the US or Barnes and Noble. And I’m sure there are other smaller book retailers that you can get it from. So yeah, that would that would be the place to to find it.
Well, that’s great. I’ll put all the links to this in the show notes. So when we publish everything, they are out there as well. And I absolutely appreciate you I know it’s the evening there and I’m sure you’d want to go get some cuddles in with your son. But please, you know, anything at all. Let the viewers know. We are going to put all the notes in there for them to find you. I appreciate you jumping on the show today. And I look forward to continuing you know the conversations in the future. It’s been a really good session, I think for all of us to remember, you know, to to be gracious to ourselves. I think first and foremost so
well thank you. It’s been a pleasure to talk with you.
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