Sol Smith [00:00:03]: Lots of times if I do a video on on TikTok or Instagram and talk about traits, there will be people who jump on there and say, these are just human traits. Guess what? Autistics are human, you know? And we all experience some of these some of the time. The difference with an autistic person is the persistence with which they show up. It's different if somebody just finds Muzak annoying than if somebody goes, like, oh, I can only go to Walmart during their sensory friendly hour from seven to eight.

P

enny Williams [00:00:34]: Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast where I share insights and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches. I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author, and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey of raising your atypical kid. Let's get started.

P

enny Williams [00:00:56]: Welcome back, everyone, to Beautifully Complex. I am thrilled to have with me today Sol Smith, and we are gonna talk about his book as well as how to help our neurodivergent kids to find their place, to be authentic, to take on self discovery so they can even figure out what being authentic might look like for them. I'm really excited to jump into this conversation, but will you start by letting everybody know who you are, what you do, and, of course, the title of your book?

S

ol Smith [00:01:34]: Yeah. Yeah. I'm Sol Smith. I'm an autistic and ADHD life coach, college professor for twenty four years, and I, yeah, I have a book coming out. It's called The Autistic's Guide to Self Discovery, and it's, you know, mainly talking to, late diagnosed autistics who are just sort of coming into this world and, you know, this new world of discovering themselves and trying to see how to better make fit for themselves. I also am a parent of four neurodivergent kids and have, you know, a lot of experience in the world of of education. And, yeah, I'm really excited to talk about all of this.

P

enny Williams [00:02:10]: Yeah. I have been able to read some of the book, probably 30% or so so far already, and it's really engaging. Like, you pulled me right into your world, and I already my neurodivergent kid is 22. Mhmm. But I had a lot of ahas reading some of the stories and some of the perspective that you were sharing about him. And I've worked really hard to be the parent who understands autism, who works with him on being his true self and all these things. But the way that you explain some things kind of from that insider perspective really clicked for me. And, yeah, I think there's gonna be so many other things like that in this conversation that are gonna help a lot of parents.

S

ol Smith [00:02:58]: Yeah. I'm really glad about that. It it like, our our kids have a big advantage in that there's just a much better vocabulary for self identification

P

enny Williams [00:03:08]: Mhmm.

S

ol Smith [00:03:08]: Than we had Mhmm. And certainly better than, you know, my parents' generation had. I imagine that, you know, my mom would still probably argue as to whether or not my dad is on the spectrum, which is ridiculous. Just just, you know, and once you know the definition of all of that, it it it just it really fits. And, with my kids, like, just their self awareness of that, you know, studies have shown that the the earlier you know, the happier you'll be in life that the better your contentment is because you don't assign what appear to be shortcomings to shortcomings of yourself that you see that, oh, I fit differently into this world. I don't compare myself to this arbitrary notion of success. And, you know, instead, I have to find my own definitions of what all this stuff means and find my own way. And just by having that locus of control, which Mhmm.

S

ol Smith [00:04:04]: Obviously, we have to find our own resources and create our own resources for each other. I mean, just like this, you know, there's no centralized place to find all of these things, and I think that's kind of what we're in the process of doing now is building for each other all these different roadmaps. And that's part of what the book is about, part of what I have an online community that's about that, and, you know, part of what your podcast here is about.

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enny Williams [00:04:26]: Yeah. Yeah. Just hoping to find the comfort in being who you are. And it's hard. Like, this is hard work, especially when you feel like you maybe don't fit or don't have a place.

S

ol Smith [00:04:45]: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. There's so many different dots to connect, that it's easy to miss the fact that it's autism. You know? Like, just sort of looking back and, you know, I always felt like I faked my way through school because I did assignments differently than they told me to. You know, I'd start with the final draft, and then I would make a sort of bad version of that to be a rough draft, then I'd make a a outline from that because you had to show all of your work.

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enny Williams [00:05:11]: Yep.

S

ol Smith [00:05:11]: And I did the same thing with math. I would put the answer, and then I'd sort of, like, make bad handwriting to try to show the work because I just it was tedious. Mhmm. So I always felt like I faked my way through school, then I had jobs where I just had, you know, felt like I was doing a good job, and my students felt like I was doing a good job. But my colleagues just never seemed to, approve of me after a few months, and I felt like I the only answer was to go to other jobs. And yet, it always felt like I was just having different episodes of bad luck at different places. And you don't connect those two things with the, you know, tags on your shirt bothering you, with music being too loud in grocery stores, you know, with not being able to touch cotton balls. Like, those don't seem like they would have one underlying cause.

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ol Smith [00:05:57]: Uh-huh. But once you know that your nervous system is different, all of these things have this big underlying cause. And, like, memory is somehow connected to all of this, my point of view, the way I analyze things. So it's really interesting to sort of, like, see all of this and start, you know, unwinding this thread and seeing all of these differences.

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enny Williams [00:06:17]: Mhmm. I also can't touch cotton balls.

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ol Smith [00:06:19]: Oh, they're the worst.

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enny Williams [00:06:20]: And when I read that in the book, I was like, I feel so seen. And wooden utensils, I there are no wooden utensils in our house. I cannot. It just makes me like, it's so crazy. And I also have the symmetry thing. Like, if I wet one hand, the other hand has to be wet too. Right? And I Makes sense. I have these little things.

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enny Williams [00:06:39]: And and you brought this up in the book too, like, that everybody has some little trait that might seem autistic, but it doesn't mean that we're all autistic.

S

ol Smith [00:06:50]: Do you

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enny Williams [00:06:51]: wanna explain what that really means?

S

ol Smith [00:06:53]: Yeah. That you know, lots of times if I do a video on on TikTok or Instagram and talk about traits, there will be people who jump on there and say, these are just human traits. Mhmm. And it's like, guess what? Autistics are human, you know? And we all experience some of these some of the time. The difference with an autistic person is the way these traits show up in our life, the persistence with which they show up tend to be such that it really can affect the way that we choose to live, the way that we, you know, occupy our time, the choices that we make every day. So once the traits are so abundant that you make a totally different life choice based on it, you know, that's autism where it's different if somebody just finds Muzak annoying than if somebody goes, like, oh, I can only go to Walmart during their sensory friendly hour from seven to eight. Right. You know? That that's a very big difference.

S

ol Smith [00:07:50]: And and, you know, it's easy to write this off because, you know, when you have these bits and pieces, like it's like when somebody says, I understand masking because, you know, I mask at the dentist, and I have a customer service voice. And that's true. But we don't expect going to the dentist or dealing with customer service to be necessarily a fun or engaging experience where we're supposed to be our authentic selves. But how about masking at a party or masking at a family gathering? You know, there's lots of things that are supposed to be relaxing, cutting loose, enjoying yourself that are tense and scary situations for autistics, and we have a persona. We have a fake version of ourselves that we feel like we have to put on. Mhmm. And that's really different than masking through a dental appointment.

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enny Williams [00:08:38]: Right. Right. I wanna talk more about masking because I think this is something that's difficult for parents who maybe are neurotypical to completely understand. And I can admit that I'm one of those people that I don't quite and I think part of the reason is because I have intensive social anxiety. Mhmm. And so I do put on a front, which I would consider masking because of the anxiety. So yeah. So, like, for me, it's hard to tease apart when are we sort of performing in the role.

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enny Williams [00:09:14]: When we go to work, you know, we interact with our colleagues in a specific way versus I go to work and I'm masking.

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ol Smith [00:09:23]: Mhmm.

P

enny Williams [00:09:24]: And maybe that's more of the authenticity, but both don't feel really authentic. Like, this is where I struggle. Help us take this apart maybe a little bit.

S

ol Smith [00:09:33]: Okay. No. For sure. And, you know, well, first of all, just to say that there there are some sorts of masks that autistics wear that that, over time may become somewhat comfortable. You know, I always say that my sort of professor persona is somewhat comfortable because there is a very clearly defined role. You know, I'm standing up in front of the class. I'm in control of the conversation. I don't have to do a reciprocal back and forth where we are trading different levels of vulnerability, or I don't have to join somebody else's conversation and engage with their rules or pacing.

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ol Smith [00:10:06]: So we have these sort of really specific roles that make it very easy for me to engage with people and feel like I have a, you know, sort of parasocial relationship with them. So that's sort of an easy it's kinda like having an easy suit to put on that is comfortable to wear, and I don't mind being that. With colleagues, it's a little bit different because colleagues, you have a sort of, like, work persona, but there's also this element of that they're kind of trying to be friends too or there's at least a rhetoric of being friends. And those are two very different worlds to me. Right. So there that line between friendship and coworker is really hard, and I'd much rather just not cross it. So if a coworker is like, you wanna grab a drink after work, I just always make up an excuse. I just need no.

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ol Smith [00:10:50]: I don't because I don't know what we're gonna talk about. I don't wanna bring up my family. I don't wanna talk about work stuff. And the minute that I sort of let my guard down and let those two things interfere, I'm not sure exactly which mask to wear at which time. So the difference really is that a neurotypical will match other people's tone, vibe, atmosphere very instinctively. So just just for example, there was a experiment where they showed regular everyday social interactions on video to, neurotypicals and to autistics. And in neurotypicals, when they're in the brain scanner watching these interactions, they saw that their mirror neurons light up. So Right.

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ol Smith [00:11:35]: For them, they are doing this sort of form of feeling as if they're taking part in this interaction, feeling as if they sort of, like, match what's going on here. And the autistics, their mirror neurons are underactive, and instead, their mentalizing network is lighting up. So they're very cognitively analyzing what's happening. You know? So it's it's like sort of like if you can really understand, you know, how to play Mario Kart, you don't even remember which one's the gas or the the brake anymore. If somebody says, which one's the gas pedal? You're like, I don't know. Like, you just put it in your hand and do it. Where, you know, if you're just learning, you're really trying to figure this out. But we're always just learning as autistics.

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ol Smith [00:12:16]: We're always trying to match this. So, like, when you're building a friendship, for example, the number one predictor for friendship among neurotypicals is proximity and time. If you see somebody, often you're close together, often you become friends. And this is just, you know, small talk. You feel each other out. You're kinda, like, lobbing a ball back and forth, then you slowly get a little bit deeper and deeper. In autistics, this isn't how conversation works. We don't see many of those layers of depth in conversation.

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ol Smith [00:12:45]: We see conversation just generally as a transfer of knowledge, as information exchange, and small talk, which is just the general observation of the immediate surroundings so that people can converse and establish rapport without taking any risks feels like a waste of time. So as things get deeper, we have to sort of guess how much vulnerability is being shown, how much trust is being shown. And you're really at risk with these different levels that are happening at holding back and seeming too cold or offering too much and seeming like you're oversharing. And Yeah. This makes it where building friendships is really feels like a difficult, unpaste thing to do. And it's much safer for autistics to build friendships around common interests where we can both talk about this, and that gives us something to sort of build a rapport over before we risk being, you know, vulnerable to each other about something. So Yeah. Yeah.

S

ol Smith [00:13:48]: So basically, it's that that locus of control and sort of seeing these layers of communication that are happening in a conversation. And it's sort of like being colorblind.

P

enny Williams [00:14:00]: Yeah. Yeah. I'm connecting so much with so much of what you're saying with my own kid. Yeah. And that social interaction is so exhausting draining. Would you agree with that?

S

ol Smith [00:14:22]: Oh, definitely. You're just like, you're very busy analyzing things. You're very busy trying to figure it all out. I noticed one thing, you know, before you self diagnose and you go, oh, autistics have trouble with friendship, but I don't. But I later realized I made all of my friends through up through the my teens through my brother. My brother was very social, and he introduced me to people. And this gave me a role. I was the little brother.

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ol Smith [00:14:46]: I could drop in and out of friendships. I could drop in and out of activities, and that was okay. I had a sort of role to play. And since getting married, I've made all of my friendships through my wife. She introduces me to people. I'm the husband. And, again, I have a role. Like, I'm not expected to keep up with text messages.

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ol Smith [00:15:05]: I'm not expected to, be at every single function. So it puts me at this sort of safe distance while I can also enjoy the social interactions. But I also realized that it puts a certain strain on my wife that she sort of has to sort of watch and be a sort of ambassador sometimes at these interactions, whether she's explaining things or making sure I'm being a little bit appropriate or something like that. So, yeah, when I'm feeling very relaxed, it's usually because I'm in a comfortable role and I have a safe person there who's, you know, more or less kind of watching to help regulate my executive function. And if I'm not, then, yeah, it's really exhausting.

P

enny Williams [00:15:47]: Yeah. I love that you used the word ambassador

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ol Smith [00:15:50]: Yeah.

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enny Williams [00:15:50]: Because I feel like that's sort of the role I took as a parent often. I was Mhmm. You know, really hypervigilant, probably too much at times, I'll admit, in watching over my kids' social interactions, because they were hard for him because people did misunderstand. Right? And so I like thinking about it as an ambassador instead. Right? No. I mean,

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ol Smith [00:16:12]: it's hard to know how much to do because every parent who's ever gotten kids ready for school in the morning knows that to some degree, you have to be your kid's executive function.

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enny Williams [00:16:22]: Mhmm.

S

ol Smith [00:16:22]: You know, that they don't have executive function, you have to be their executive function, they're time blind, like, we we end up really socializing our kids into having a awareness of time and awareness of urgency and, you know, it's sort of a pity that we do that. But, yeah, for autistics, it it goes several layers deeper. So it's harder to know exactly where those lines are. Mhmm. And it can extend into adulthood pretty easily. And especially with the spiky profile of autistics where they're very good at some things and very challenged at other things, then it's really hard to know where to be protective and where it's going to be embarrassing for them. So it's it it's hard to know exactly where that is.

P

enny Williams [00:17:03]: Mhmm. And you talked in the book about not being aware of or not feeling embarrassed, of being aware of when someone might be embarrassed in your situation, but not feeling that embarrassment. And I found that really interesting.

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ol Smith [00:17:17]: Yeah. I tend I seem to be somehow forgiven of that. I just I tend to not get embarrassed. Like, public speaking is easy for me, things like that. There are times where I'm under intense scrutiny that I would rather not be there, but that feels much more like stress or pressure than embarrassment. But definitely, yeah, I just I can meet the conditions of embarrassment and recognize it without really feeling that way. So, yeah, sometimes there's some big advantages like that, you know, where we say, oh, it's a superpower. Yeah.

S

ol Smith [00:17:46]: I can really put myself out there and and, you know, people will say, I'll talk about imposter syndrome and self confidence, and people will comment on my videos, you have imposter syndrome? You seem so confident. And I'm like, I'm glad it comes across that way. Right. You know? Right. But that really is that's a that's my sort of lack of self awareness in some ways too that I can get in front of this phone and talk. And it's also years of practice of wanting to share the things I've learned, wanting to share knowledge, being in front of a classroom, and establishing that relationship. So, yeah, I very much have the imposter syndrome and the lack of confidence, but I also can project that sense of those things very well. So it's a bit of a dichotomy.

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enny Williams [00:18:27]: Sort of makes me think of fake it till you make it. You know, you put on

S

ol Smith [00:18:31]: this Yeah.

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enny Williams [00:18:32]: Facade that you're you're good. You've got it. But really inside, it's like, ah.

S

ol Smith [00:18:38]: Yeah. I was, working in my doctorate for education, and I ran across this line that said that most educators have imposter syndrome for the first five years of teaching. And at this time, it was my fifth year, and I was like, oh, good. It's about to go away. And it just did not. It's like at all. And I was like, oh, darn. Yeah.

S

ol Smith [00:18:55]: So, yeah, fake it till you make it. It's just kind of for autistics, we're faking it a lot of the time just because, yeah, we we don't do things the same way. We have a different you know, the bottom up process is very different from a top down process.

P

enny Williams [00:19:18]: Can we talk a little bit about overthinking, argumentativeness, these things that I think society assigns to some autistic challenges or behaviors that maybe aren't a good way of looking at it. And I sort of had these ahas as I was reading some of your book about you know, I feel like oftentimes, my own son just has so much knowledge, and he wants to share all of it. Mhmm. And he wants you to see his point of view. Mhmm. But he will keep going until I feel like, you know, I've been in a boxing match. Right? And I'm losing. And so how do we sort of reframe that? Right? As the adult on the other side of that, help us understand what's really going on.

S

ol Smith [00:20:07]: Yeah. What what you're really seeing is is, it's an issue of context sensitivity. Neurotypicals seem to share a lot of the same broad knowledge of context. So if there's a disagreement or an argument, say, it's usually less of a misunderstanding and more of two different points of view on the same landscape. And with autistics, it's very often a misunderstanding because the context of what is being said or why it's being said can be very, very different that we're anchored in a totally different set of meaning than the neurotypical is. And we feel like we need to explain all of the context. You know, this is an issue of, you know, sometimes it's intent versus impact. Right? We've really hurt somebody's feelings.

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ol Smith [00:20:57]: We feel bad about that. But we feel even worse that they appear to feel like we meant to hurt their feelings. Mhmm. So after apologizing for hurting feelings, now we wanna show how we got there. So we begin to explain the context of how we felt this way and ended up saying the thing that we said. And this can mean retreading some old ground, and sometimes it can mean retreading years of old ground to establish a pattern of thinking and why it would arise now. And And the neurotypical person on the other side of this conversation can be like, why are you rehashing this? Why are you holding this against me? And we're like, no. No.

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ol Smith [00:21:35]: No. I'm I'm not. I don't hold it against you. It's just that there was this pattern, and I thought this is where the repeat of that pattern. Mhmm. And so to us, it doesn't feel personal. It feels like this is something that happens with us sometimes, and it feels like we were getting into the same misunderstanding. And to them, it feels like you're taking away my autonomy, my ability to make my own choices by saying I'm stuck in a pattern, and you're reading me like tea leaves.

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ol Smith [00:22:01]: And I'm like, well, I read everybody like tea leaves. You know? Like like so it's hard to sort of separate those things out. So a lot of times, we you know, we really are searching for wanting to share more context, wanting to share where our point of view is coming from. And sometimes we're seeking more context, so we can come across as argumentative by questioning a lot. And this can be in class. This can be in a disagreement where we just want to have more and more information so we can get a better idea of what is being discussed here. You know, like, math is hard for a lot of autistic math classes because it's abstract, and, you're doing these equations that don't have the numbers aren't representative of anything. Yeah.

S

ol Smith [00:22:43]: And it's like, if you can put this in context, then I might care about it. You know, if you can tell me why we're doing this, I might care about it. But you come across as sound sounding as if you are challenging the teacher to go, why does this matter? It feels like you're saying this doesn't matter. But I literally am asking them, why does this matter? Like, why would this be used? I want to know because then I might be really fascinated with it. And it can come across as as really questioning. And, again, in the workplace, when you question your directions, it may be because I don't have the full context of why we're doing things this way, and I would like to understand it better, but it sounds like you're challenging them. Mhmm. So, yeah, there are a lot of things to sort of rethink about this.

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ol Smith [00:23:24]: And, yeah, really trying to sort of step back and think, oh, is this one of these places where the context is way off? And, yeah, trying to answer that can be really difficult at times.

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enny Williams [00:23:35]: Mhmm. Or seeking context. Like, I hadn't connected the questioning or the digging deeper or needing to know why with needing context until you just explain that, and it makes so much sense. And Yeah. Peter Vermeulen, I think it is, he talks a lot about context with autism as well. And it's a big deal. It's a it's a big part of things, I think. Right.

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ol Smith [00:24:00]: No. It really is. And it's, yeah, it's one of those major things. And one of the reasons why our brains are using so much more energy is because we are always sort of rebuilding things from the ground up by, you know, bringing in so much context where neurotypical top down thinking is basically building shortcuts. You know, it's taking large amounts of context and then boiling them down into a concept that is, you know, more or less devoid of nuance or detail. So that it's easy to think about. Because no matter what brain you have, its number one job is to think less because it uses lots of energy to think Mhmm. And it knows this.

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ol Smith [00:24:39]: So it wants to think less And, yeah. So this can really be, again, exhausting for autistics.

P

enny Williams [00:24:46]: Yeah. Yeah. Before we close and wrap up, I wanna talk a little bit about helping parents, other neurotypical adults to I wanna word it properly. Like, so often, I hear parents say, but my kid has to exist in the real world, but my kid can't speak to their employer that way.

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ol Smith [00:25:07]: Mhmm.

P

enny Williams [00:25:07]: Right? And so we need to understand where that balance is between really guiding our kid to be able to find their own success and joy, whatever that looks like for them, within this world, but also being neuro affirming, also supporting authenticity. Right? And where do we find that balance? It can be so difficult.

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ol Smith [00:25:34]: I think it takes a lot more patience than most people realize. Mhmm. I think that you have to really, as much as possible, and this may be philosophical or based on my own experience, as much as possible, stay out of their way and let them do what is interesting to them and see if this is going to take them further. And if I can just share the example of Yeah. My third kid, my daughter, and, Rubik's Cubing. She, during the pandemic, watched this documentary about speedcubers. And, there is this autistic kid, Max Park, who became the world champion speedcuber, and it's this very wholesome documentary about him and his idol who lives in Australia, and they're rivals, but very friendly rivals, and they've grown to be great friends. And she said, my life's goal is to meet these guys.

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ol Smith [00:26:25]: And she, six months later, met them because she was going up against them. Like, she started working on this so much. So she wanted to go back to school. She goes back to school after, you know, the lockdown, but she was so completely shy, so completely closed off from people. She wouldn't talk to other kids. She asked that we tell the teachers not to say her name out loud. She would wear a mask, and she would not take it off even for lunch. Just completely shy.

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ol Smith [00:26:52]: But we just stepped back and let her do this, and we supported this cubing thing a lot. She found competitions and would go to it. And from this, it took months of her meeting other kids who were also neurodivergent and forming friendships at the speed cubing competitions before she found her voice and found herself there and found this confidence. And now she just really is very social at school. She's found her way. She used to think that just, the classes were dumb and everything, and now she's identified a college she wants to go to because they have a great cubing program.

P

enny Williams [00:27:29]: Mhmm.

S

ol Smith [00:27:30]: So or a a cubing club, and if they're very selective. So she has a 4.91 GPA that she is determined to get into this. And it all came from really chasing this interest of hers. And it would be so easy to say, okay, you've done your cubing. Now we need to work on your schoolwork. You know? Yeah. Just a few months into that, we very much could have said you're spending hours a day on this, and you're not studying your history. But by letting her just keep doing this, she really found her sense of control, and she found that we felt like what she's interested in is important.

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ol Smith [00:28:04]: Yeah. So she feels taken seriously and trusted, and it bloomed into something much bigger. So I do think we need to, like, sort of step back and make them feel like what they're into is important first. And the the stuff about, you know, how are you gonna fit into society, I I I do think a lot of that can come later when they have a better sense of themselves rather than yourself isn't good enough until you've done this for everybody else, if that makes sense.

P

enny Williams [00:28:32]: Yeah. Totally. And we need to be so open with those timelines.

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ol Smith [00:28:37]: Yeah.

P

enny Williams [00:28:37]: You know? We need to quit expecting that kids at certain ages are gonna have certain skills. And we talk about this a lot when we talk about neurodivergent kids, that it's developmental delay, that there's different timelines there and different skills and things. But we still sort of get stuck at that 18, you're an adult spot, and we have to be willing to give people more time to do it their way Mhmm. And in their own time. That's how they're gonna get there. If you were stressing your daughter and putting a lot of pressure on her to not care so much about cubing, what's gonna happen? She's still not gonna be maybe developing skills. She's still not gonna be learning at school. She's not gonna be open.

P

enny Williams [00:29:20]: She's not gonna have that confidence. Right? These are all things that lead us to that point.

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ol Smith [00:29:24]: Right. Right. And it's and, yeah, in autistics especially, we have these spiky profiles. We're very good at some things. We fall behind in others, and this myth of, like, how you should be at different ages doesn't really check out because, you know, we had this idea that that's being well rounded, but that's just how neurotypicals seem to be. It's not necessarily the way one should be. And it can look lots of different ways. I mean, when I did all of my psychological testing, my psychiatrist was very excited to tell me my IQ.

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ol Smith [00:29:54]: He was impressed and thought I'd be impressed and thought this was cool, and I was like, okay. That's cool. And then he was not so excited to tell me that my social acuity, my ability to pick up on social cues was about that of a seven year old. Mhmm. And I was like, oh, that makes sense. You know? So, I mean, that's a huge disparity. And, one of our family friends who we spend a lot of time with, we met in the cubing world, she's 18 years old, and she's completing her master's in quantum computing. Wow.

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ol Smith [00:30:22]: Yeah. Right? And all of her colleagues in this program are in the thirties and forties, and they are intimidated by her. They haven't made friends with her, and they don't have a lot of sympathy for her. They just think that the world's been handed to her, that it must be so easy being so smart. And the poor thing feels very isolated and alone Yeah. Has a difficult time making friends already. And how do you tell that to these people? You know, she looks like she has it all together. So we can look one way and then just, you know, our internal worlds can be very difficult, falling apart, and it's hard to find the right people to talk to and divulge this stuff to.

P

enny Williams [00:31:00]: Mhmm. That's why it's so important to look at the whole person.

S

ol Smith [00:31:04]: Right.

P

enny Williams [00:31:04]: You know? We we use all these different things as standards of measure. You know? There's assessments and IQ tests to to measure intelligence. Right? There's these measures of social acuity. There's these measures of, you know, like, people think the more friends you have, the

S

ol Smith [00:31:21]: Right.

P

enny Williams [00:31:21]: The more social you are or whatever. And it's like, no. Like, there's different aspects to all of us, and no one is high marks at everything. It's just not possible. It's not human. And so, yeah, that just reminded me of, like, we have to really be looking at the whole person and not get fixated on one aspect or another.

S

ol Smith [00:31:44]: Right. Right.

P

enny Williams [00:31:44]: It's really, really key. Yeah. Tell everybody where they can find the book. I'm not sure when it's publishing. Remind me of that. I've forgotten. And also where they can find you online.

S

ol Smith [00:31:56]: The book, well, it comes out April 22, so it should be out now.

P

enny Williams [00:31:59]: Okay. So we have picked out by the time they hear this.

S

ol Smith [00:32:02]: Yeah. That's right. So that's exciting, and it can be found on any online bookstore, and and you should be able to order it through your own independent bookstore if it's not there. And you can find me online at professorsoul.com. And you can also find my community where we have a lot of autistic and ADHD people come together to try and build a better sense of of self and better sense of direction together at neurospicycommunity.com. And we have people from dozens of countries. It's gotten to be a really great place to meet and talk and share.

P

enny Williams [00:32:35]: Love that. And I will link all of that up in the show notes for everyone Oh,

S

ol Smith [00:32:38]: thank you.

P

enny Williams [00:32:38]: At parentingADHD and autism.com/311 for episode 311. It has been so uplifting and hopeful and eye opening to have this conversation with you. I can't wait to finish the book, and I can't wait for the parents out there to read it and really start to connect some of the things that they're seeing in a different way, to understand them in a different way and to reframe them. Because that's really what this parenting is all about, is reframing so many things and being open to letting our kids lead. And you have really illustrated why that's so important and why that works as well, which I think is an important key aspect of that. So I thank you so much Thank you. For the book and for being open with your own story. It really Yeah.

P

enny Williams [00:33:28]: It changes lives, and it's an amazing thing.

S

ol Smith [00:33:31]: Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

P

enny Williams [00:33:33]: I will see everybody on the next episode. Take good care.

P

enny Williams [00:33:37]: Thanks for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share. And don't forget to check out my online courses and parent coaching at parenting ADHD and autism.com and at thebehaviorrevolution.com.