Beautifully Complex 355
Why Starting Over Is a Parenting Superpower, with Wendy Snyder

[00:00:12] Penny Williams: Welcome back, everybody. I'm so glad to have you here and listening. I have with me today Wendy Snyder of Fresh Start Parenting, and we're gonna talk about starting over, what that looks like in parenting, when we might do that, when we might not do that, if there's ever a time not to do that, and what that means for us as parents of neurodivergent kids, kids who are walking through the world a little bit differently, experiencing the world a little bit differently. So Wendy, will you start by telling everybody who you are and what you do?
[00:00:49] Wendy Snyder: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Penny. It's so good to be here and to connect, and I'm really grateful for this conversation today. So, hello listeners. I'm Wendy Snyder. I am a powerful parenting educator, family life coach, and author of the new book Fresh Start for Your Family. And to me, a fresh start is really about having the humility, which we really do believe is a superpower here at Fresh Start Family.
Mother Teresa talked about how humility can change the world, and I agree with her. But having the humility to say, hmm, there might've been some things that I inherited from my own upbringing that I can see I'm now maybe repeating with my own kids, and I want to change that. Like, it doesn't feel good.
Maybe the ability or the courage to raise your hand and say, man, yesterday was really a shit show.
I find that sometimes the lowest moments as a parent, or really as a human actually, some of those lowest moments where it just feels dark and heavy and it feels like what you're doing is air quotes not working, those are often the most fertile ground to be able to actually step into a next season of support and get the help that you need to do things differently.
And so here at Fresh Start Family, we really focus on four main pillars. They're the same pillars that I teach about in the book. But some of the biggest ones are the ability to raise your hand and get humble about, wow, I've got some reactive tendencies. That was my story.
I found this work when my daughter was three. She's now 18, which is just wild to have an adult child. And that same strong will that she was blessed with, that I thought I was gonna lose my mind over and I really did think something was air quotes wrong with her, that's before I learned that uniqueness is a freaking gift. But she's now 18. She's accomplished her dream of becoming a Division I beach volleyball athlete at a top 10 school in the nation. She'll be headed to college this next fall.
That is an accomplishment that I attest to this work. So yes, she's amazing, but she was an undersized defender, meaning that just means you're short in volleyball, and she had to fight for that recruitment. And that strong will that we learned how to nurture and build up instead of break through the years, that is one of the reasons why she was able to persevere and believe in herself and really get this very hard-to-reach goal. Less than 1% of high school athletes will become Division I athletes in college.
But back then, and really for a long time after I even got into this work, reactive parenting was where I struggled. That's what I inherited. So it took me eight years to stop yelling. I was a not-so-gentle wrist grabber.
I've written, and I always have taught through story and taught through vulnerability because one of my core values is that humility is a gift. I do tell the story in the book, but I've also written an article called I Left Bruises, and I was a reactive parent.
And still actually to this day, Penny, 15 years into this work, I still have moments where I'm like, damn. I still have not air quotes perfectly cured that reactivity. And that is okay because we believe that there is no perfection in life or parenting. But reactive to responsive parenting is one of our key pillars.
Another area that we believe is a gift when parents can raise their hand and say, hmm, I'm pretty much doing the same thing that was done to me, was in the realm of teaching kids how to do things differently tomorrow. So a lot of parents lean on punishment versus discipline. So we teach a compassionate discipline model here in pillar four of the book, and that is really different than what nine out of 10 of us inherited as far as the punishment model. Time-outs, yanking technology, a lot of parents still practice corporal punishment, especially if they're in the higher-control religious world.
And so that's one of the other places we see parents have the courage to start fresh, wipe the slate clean. That's usually after a really hard moment where they realize I can't keep doing this.
And then the last main pillar that I talk about often is the ability to see your children as a blessing exactly as they are, not as you wish they were. So for me, that was around my strong-willed daughter and thinking that if she just changed, then my life would be easier. And really it was the opposite. She has always been like an angel to me. She is the person who has called me into healing. She is the reason why I am here today.
Her button-pushing ability was what allowed me to see the triggers that lay deep down inside of me way before I had children and that just never got healed. And going through those very triggering moments with her allowed me to get the healing that I needed to then be able to operate and see the world in a different way.
So that's kind of what I think of when I think of a fresh start, and that's what I write about a lot in the book, is there's all these strategies that we teach, and then there's the deeper layers of limiting beliefs and triggers and behaviors that a lot of us inherited. And you just don't have to keep doing them. We call them inherited hand-me-down parenting tactics. And finding the courage to say, like, I'm so over this. I don't wanna do this anymore is actually quite a fun adventure.
[00:06:40] Penny Williams: Yeah, and that's just the starting point, right? Then you have to do the work to actually be able to shift things for yourself, which is so hard. But I wanna first get clear on timing. Is there an ideal time to make a fresh start? Is it ever too late to make a fresh start? What do you want parents to know about that?
[00:07:04] Wendy Snyder: Well, we'll start off by saying heck no. It is never too late, right? It is never too late to start fresh.
We talk about this in our membership quite often, the Fresh Fed experience, of how if you are somebody who was raised in a home where, as an adult, you did get grounded and shamed, “What’s wrong with you?” name-called like “you’re being lazy,” “you’re being entitled,” whatever your parents did in those triggered moments where they were just really trying to get you to behave differently, or maybe you grew up in a very reactive home where there was a lot of fighting or maybe even corporal punishment, and your parents came to you at the ripe old age of 70 years old and said, “You know what? I started reading a few books and I'm now seeing a therapist every week, and I realize that I did some things that I wish I would've done differently, and now I'm learning a new way and I want you to know that I'm stepping into a new season of education so I can do it differently with my grandkids,” we would all be like, yes.
We might have a little part of us, depending on the level of autocratic parenting you were raised with, to be like, why couldn't you come to me 30 years earlier or 50 years earlier? But most of us would be like, thank you. Thank you. Yes. I would love that you're in therapy. I love that you're reading books. I love that you're opening your mind to understand how that isn't the way.
What actually happens is the opposite for most people in our community. Especially, again, if they're in the high-control religious world, they have parents who dig their feet in the mud and are judging them for having compassion and doing things differently. They'll watch from afar and say, “You really should be harder on your kids,” or “You really should punish them.” They'll kind of be the fishbowl. And then of course, we do have parents that are incredibly supportive.
But point being, you can imagine that scenario, right? So if you have a teenager and you all have some patterns that are pretty ingrained and you step into this work, sure, is it gonna be a higher degree of difficulty to start changing those patterns versus if you do it earlier? Yes.
The perfect world scenario is you learn, you read a book like this and you learn this work before you have a baby, right? In all my years, thousands and thousands of students I've helped, I've had maybe one couple, one couple when I first started teaching and I would teach out of my house, one couple that did it when they were pregnant. Maybe two. I can think of someone who messaged me online. But I mean, it's just not the norm.
That is my vision for the future, that this kind of work is required in high school and college, like Parenting 101, Humaning 101. But it's just not the case, right? So many of us get it once we're in crisis.
So for me, that looked like my kid was three. I had her in timeout 17 times a day. I was starting to spank her because everyone and their mother told me that's just what you do. That'll fix it fast. And I was miserable. I was blaming her for all my stress. So that was my crisis moment where I was like, and I write about that in the book really in the intro, the moment I sat on the hardwood floor at five o'clock at night, left a six-minute message for my sister-in-law saying, “I'm miserable,” as Stella was screaming, the baby was screaming, and I was like, “I'm miserable. This is not what I signed up for. How did I get here?”
But other people might hit that rock-bottom moment and finally step into a new way when their kids are like eight and 13, right? Or whatever. It doesn't matter. But of course, it is a higher degree of difficulty as your kids get older because of the ingrained patterns, right?
We talk a lot about the nervous system here. The more years you've been doing something, it's going to be a little bit more effort and intention to unwind those patterns, for example yelling.
But it's always worth it. It's part of adulting. Like, yeah. What else are we gonna do in life, right? I know we all have a million things to do, but I really see this work as a fun adventure to challenge yourself. If you have an intention and a calling put on your heart and you are willing to see, wow, I've got some things I wanna change, dive in. Dive in. Because it will be something that you never regret.
If you dive in and you decide to make a fresh start and, for example, replace punishment with discipline and your kids are like 10 and eight years old or 13 and 15, you will look back one day and thank yourself even though it took a lot of effort.
[00:12:00] Penny Williams: And there's always things that we don't know yet. One of the big reliefs for me in my own self-blame and shame as a parent was Maya Angelou's quote, “When you know better, you do better.” And I'm like, okay, I really didn't know then. I did do these things that I really wish I hadn't as a parent, but now I know better. So going forward, I'm gonna do better.
And that really came as a relief for me and a mantra. There were so many days where it was like, I'm not gonna get stuck in that, even though I'm feeling bad about it, because I know I didn't know any different. I was doing what people were telling me to do.
I was told that I had to take all of his toys out of his room and he could earn them back one at a time. He was like four or five. It was horrific. I still, he's 23 now, and I still beat myself up about that thing because it's just not at all who I am. But I was listening to therapists and doing the things that people were telling me to do.
Now I know better. I would never advise anybody to do that. I would never do anything like that now. But I think our kids are this opportunity, if we let it be, to help us grow and help us be the person that we actually wanna be.
If I hadn't had a neurodivergent kid, would I be nearly as compassionate and empathetic about some stranger's kid screaming in the grocery store? I don't think so. I don't think, “Oh my gosh, I wish they would get their kid to shut up.” I think, “I wonder why that kid is struggling right now.” And it breaks my heart instead of irritating me. I wouldn't be that person if it weren't for my kid, right?
[00:13:53] Wendy Snyder: And you wouldn't have gone on to help thousands and thousands of other parents learn the same.
[00:13:59] Penny Williams: Yeah. If I hadn't learned it, I couldn't share it, right?
[00:14:02] Wendy Snyder: Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
And also I will add too, Penny, that in our world, and I assume in your world too, I love that Maya Angelou quote, right? Know better, do better. But we also have a lot of students, and this was my story too, where even once we knew better, we weren't able to do better because of the nervous system setting, right?
So that's an important thing. The do-better part is once you are able, you will. But until you really heal the nervous system, you'll keep doing that other stuff. And the important part is to get out of the shame pattern of beating yourself up because, as Brené Brown teaches us, and her social research has proven, which I do cite and talk about in the book, it will keep us stuck in repeating.
In our community, we have a lot of repetitive stuff and then people beat themselves up because they think they should know. Logically they're like, “I know I shouldn't yell. I don't wanna yell. It's not effective.” Or punishing, right? Or grabbing wrists too tight, and then dammit, I did it. I did it.
And so then we get to do the compassion work of how do you actually work through that in a way that effectively reduces the chances that you're gonna do it again tomorrow? Because 99% of what kids learn is caught, not taught. So we are the most important vessel for their behavior change.
[00:15:48] Penny Williams: Mm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that knowing something and being able to implement it or integrate it in your real life are two different things.
We know the nervous system is wired for protection, and we are literally wired to give back whatever we are receiving. So if your kid is yelling at you, your body is wired to yell back. Like it's science that makes you do it. And I think that was a relief point for me where I could be more compassionate with myself about it when I learned that this is actually what we're built to do.
And what we're asking of ourselves and other parents is to override that instinct and be able to do it differently. That takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of practice and it takes a lot of time.
I've had so many parents over the years just go, “Well, it's just not that easy. I can't just snap my fingers and not be reactive anymore.” And I'm like, you're right. That's not what I'm telling you at all. It took me years to undo the learned patterns, undo the belief that what our society and culture tells us about parenting is true or true for us and our kids, and the way that we were parented.
I have a lot of families come to me and say a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle or a sibling is saying, “Well, if you would just punish them more, if you would just do this or that.” And it's so defeating for them. And it's just because they don't get it. They don't get it in the way that you do now. They don't have the understanding yet. And they may never. They may not be willing.
[00:17:36] Wendy Snyder: Even the experts. I had a woman last week who, I think she was in our membership for a little bit, but she was an example of a student that didn't stay consistent and didn't stay in the work, right? And so we all know that you can hop in and learn a few things, but this work, as we're talking about, you really gotta find a community that you like and stay in there and see it through.
And bless her heart, but she was like, “Oh my gosh, tell me what to do. I'm not in the membership anymore,” and she was asking for coaching in an email, which was not gonna happen, right? And we just got to compassionately invite her back into the membership.
But it's like, “I got this 13-year-old now. I try to do this, but now the in-home therapist,” she called it an in-home therapist or counselor. “We have an in-home therapist that it felt like was assigned by the doctor or something for this 13-year-old who has ADHD, and the therapist kept saying, ‘You need to take away the Xbox.’”
And she was like, “I thought I'm not supposed to do that,” because what we teach is literally the polar opposite. And I'm just like, how are there still experts, air quote experts, being hired or written referrals by pediatricians or, I don't know, sometimes in our world it can be really twisted high-control circles that assign these type of counselors. But in this, it sure felt like it was actually through the medical system that this person had been assigned this counselor.
So yes, it's the grandparents, but it's also these so-called experts. And it is so defeating because we know, people like you and I know, that it is so ineffective. It does not work long term.
And what you're describing about the nervous system, that innate perfect design of our human bodies to protect ourselves, to fight back, to flee, to freeze, whatever it may be, it is so important that we honor the body and say thank you.
That fight you're talking about, when a kid is in your face and your nervous system is like, fight back, yell back, yes, often it's because we watched somebody do that when we were young. But it is also this trained feeling of like a bear is chasing you. There is a four-alarm fire. The house is burning down. Do something fast.
And as you were saying, to override that without shaming ourselves, like the body is perfect. The body is not doing anything wrong. The nervous system is doing exactly what it should.
And it's a whole process, we write about in the book, to come beside the nervous system and say, “Thank you for keeping me safe, and I'm a fully grown human. I am not the same as my mother or my father. And I can see my child not as the enemy and not as the bear, but just as a human soul child who is unique.” I am going to see him in a way that is gonna allow me to step to the side, do the stop sign or the pause button, create that space between the stimulus and the response.
But yeah, what a journey it is to be the system interruptor for your own nervous system.
[00:21:01] Penny Williams: I'm so glad you brought it up too, about thanking your nervous system, because it's something that I have started trying to do for anxiety. Like, okay, thank you for trying to keep me safe, but I have considered the situation and I actually am safe right now. Something to help that anxiety reactivity sort of calm itself.
And it's not a fix. You're not gonna say that to yourself and then your nervous system's gonna go, “Huh, okay,” right? Like it's a process, but it helps. It's a piece of it.
And I think too that when we can model that for our kids, like we are not teaching kids about their nervous system, about regulation, about emotional intelligence. Why not? I don't understand why not, right? I was in my 40s, my kids were teenagers, when I learned this.
And I think that speaks too to the reason that there's a lot of experts out there who are still teaching more traditional, antiquated ways. Because that's what they were taught to do. Only in the last decade, I think, are we teaching people in psychology and stuff like that that the nervous system is a big part of this. To me, it's crucial. Without understanding your body and your nervous system, you're not gonna be able to really work through very much.
[00:22:32] Wendy Snyder: Yep.
[00:22:33] Penny Williams: It's such a core piece of it. So, modeling that for our kids is huge. And when we take that fresh start, like—
[00:22:42] Wendy Snyder: Modeling is the hardest, dammit, and it's also the most powerful. It is so powerful. And what a journey to be able to see I am responsible for so much in the co-creation of my life and at the very same time not live in shame, not live in self-blame, right? Like, “Oh, is there something wrong with me because my kid's reactive because I'm reactive?” It's like, no. There's nothing wrong with me. This was literally, for so many of us, the family lineage.
[00:23:16] Penny Williams: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:16] Wendy Snyder: And it is one of the most powerful feelings on the planet when you become a system interruptor and you become the one who has broken the chain. But man, it is quite a journey.
And then I think also that when it comes to modeling and having compassion for yourself, you have to take the blinders off. Because a lot of parents will never be willing to take the blinders off. They will go to their grave justifying their behavior and not seeing how their child is, as I say, the apple doesn't fall far. A lot of parents will never come to that point where they're like, “Oh, I see my contribution to the dance.”
And it really just puts you into the true power seat because you're able to change so much of your environment and your children too when you change yourself versus thinking that you're gonna change your kids.
I really believe we were not designed to control other human beings. And that's why all those old-school things fall flat, because they are based in power over or control, and it just doesn't work, especially for neurodivergent or strong-willed kids. It just kind of blows up in your face quite often because they are so good at raising the red flag on ineffective systems.
[00:24:34] Penny Williams: I love that you used the word dance, because immediately I thought as parents we set the tempo. We set the rhythm. We determine if it's gonna be a fast, angry song or if it's gonna be peaceful or whatever, right? And that impacts their nervous system.
What we haven't said yet is co-regulation. We haven't talked about that, but the way that we show up also is information to their nervous system and whether or not it feels that they are safe. And so the impact is greater than just our experience or the way we parent. It's also the anchor, the safety, that we provide to our kids.
[00:25:20] Wendy Snyder: I agree. And that's that temperature, so to speak. You said tempo. I often talk about the temperature in our home. Especially when it comes to the nervous system, our nervous systems really soaked up the temperature of our home the first decade or two, definitely the first decade, also the second decade, of what happened when there was imperfection. What happened when there were mistakes made? What happened when there was a disagreement or one person didn't wanna do what another person did?
What was that temperature? Was it safe to actually have conflict in your home? Did people handle it with grace and dignity and self-regulation and effective peaceful conflict resolution? Most of us would laugh at that. The answer is no.
I grew up in a home where, and this echoes a lot for my students, it was either giant fight, screaming, yelling, shaming, right? Or it was suppression. People would retreat and then just be bitter and resentful inside, but never really work through the challenge.
And then mistakes were just dealt with in the classic way.
Actually, my little guy, well he's 15 and 6'2" now, but he has a new girlfriend and she got grounded this last weekend because she snuck out. She actually got grounded and then got her phone taken away because that's the classic these days, right? Like so much compassion to those of you still doing that. Let us teach you a new way. I promise you it's not gonna work to change the behavior.
I remembered, I was laughing, because I'm like, oh my gosh, Taryn, that's my son's name, I remember sneaking out at that exact same age, exact same thing happened to me. I got grounded. I didn't have a phone to get taken away. And guess what? I just got better at hiding.
[00:27:21] Penny Williams: Not getting caught.
[00:27:22] Wendy Snyder: At hiding, right. And he knows. To this day, he goes, “I don't know why they're doing it. It's not gonna change anything, Mom.” And I'm like, it won't. And he said, “I did tell her, tell your mom to call my mom.” This is the second girlfriend he's—
[00:27:38] Penny Williams: That was well received.
[00:27:39] Wendy Snyder: Oh my gosh, yeah. The first one, like no. I was like, “Hey, here's a podcast episode. I can support you to do it differently,” and it was like crickets. And this one, I'm sure she'll never reach out.
But yeah. Oh yeah, the temperature of your home growing up. What was it like? I remember the night I came home when I snuck out that night. Oh my God, all the lights were on in my house. We came home and we were like uh-oh, right? We were 12, 13 years old, maybe 14, and it was like shame central. “What were you thinking?” “We were so worried.”
Whereas now, if I was teaching a family, and if that would've happened to me, I would've known that I could do it a different way. I could have just been like, “Hey, everyone's gonna go to sleep. I was so scared. I am definitely angry. And everyone's gonna go to sleep. We're gonna talk about this in the morning.”
I would speak emotional literacy. I would make it very clear how scared, hurt, and angry I was. And then we would go to bed, get a good night's rest now that everyone was home, and then we would work through the life skill the next day. “Tell me what happened. What were you thinking? This is the reason why we have such firm boundaries.” And then we would do logical consequences to teach an important life skill versus just “What’s wrong with you?” “Shame on you.” “You’re such a bad kid.” “Now you’re grounded and everything you love is taken away for three days.”
[00:29:16] Penny Williams: And that's really gonna do the trick, right? All that does is push them further away from us.
[00:29:21] Wendy Snyder: We talk a lot about how rules plus relationship equals respect. So the relationship you had with your son, the relationship I had with my daughter, how we did make mistakes and then make amends, right? Like that's an important part of it. We're not just saying let your kids see you be imperfect and whatever. It's like, yeah, you be imperfect, right? Let them see you fight with your husband or whoever and then make amends. Let them watch you clean things up.
With the alcohol thing, we took the same approach. We went to Mexico for my husband's 50th last summer, and Stella was 17 at the time and she was like, “Can my best friend and I get some tequila?” And we were like, “Yeah, sure. Obviously we'll all be home together.”
Terry and I quit drinking three years ago when Stella started experimenting with drinking and we were a little freaked out because she was this high-level athlete. And we looked at ourselves and were like, okay, hypocrisy. We have been literal fish for three decades. I think it's time. Let's model for Stella what it looks like to not need to have a substance. And it's time.
So it's been three and a half years. We've never felt better. But we said to her, “Sure, you can spend your own money. I'm not gonna buy it, but you can spend your own money.” So they bought this beautiful tequila bottle in Mexico.
I swear it was like night seven and we were like, “Are you guys gonna drink that?” And they were like, “Uh, yeah, I don't even know if we open it. I don't know if we can take it home.” So then they brought it home and it sat on our counter.
Funny. And Stella is in a party group. She's got diversified friends. She's got stoner friends, she's got friends at parties. She doesn't really have that many athlete friends that live the same life.
It sat on the counter for so long that we were like, what is happening? If we were 17, we were at keg parties every weekend. We were doing anything to get out of the house.
The way I see it now is we were so desperate for belonging and power because we didn't have it with our parents. On the surface level it was air quotes fine. But really I didn't have the connection that I wanted with my parents. I didn't have relationship. I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel like I belonged. There was still this type of punishment and shame going on. So anytime I got outta the house, I was like, later.
So just the real-life efficacy of what we're talking about, I want the listeners to know we're not just like, oh, it's a cool idea to really have safety in your house and teach your kids life skills. No, it actually works.
That tequila sat on the counter, I wanna say for at least six months before finally she took it to some party and she was gonna contribute or something. And I think she probably was even 18 by that time. Which I think is a big win for teenagers, to have tequila sit on the counter for six to eight months and not even touch it. It's huge, right?
[00:32:25] Penny Williams: If you had said, “No, absolutely not. You cannot taste any alcohol until you are 21,” what would've happened? She and her friend would've immediately gone and gotten some somehow and drank some of it.
We need to let kids find their path. Part of that control as parents also comes from the best of intentions. It comes from wanting the best for them. But we end up trying to guide what they become, and we can't actually do that. They're their own person.
So when we try to do that, we end up forcing the kinds of things that we don't want: a rift in the relationship, them not coming and talking to us about things.
[00:33:14] Wendy Snyder: You know, self-medicating is a thing. I know it's such a journey, but it is really so interesting to see how effective it is to have the relationship where you're not living in this hypocritical better-than-thou place, but also standing very firm in your wisdom, right?
Someone might see that as looser boundaries, but then we also have really dove deep into actual research and education around what is gonna keep our kids safe and what are the strong boundaries that you're gonna put your air quotes foot down on. But you do it with relationship, is the big thing. And that's just what most parents aren't used to.
You put your foot down around a boundary, but then you do it with fear and intimidation or threats that if they don't listen, something bad is gonna happen versus education on why the boundary exists.
In our world these days, it's a lot around technology. It's around safety, it's around telling the truth. It's around peer pressure. But the earlier you can start, the better, right? If you hear this information and you've got little ones, just dive in as early as you can.
I really do teach all of this stuff inside the book, and I tell so many stories. We're not just giving the how-to, but I really tried to give as many stories as possible to show you here's what it looks like in real life.
[00:34:53] Penny Williams: Mm. I love that we've had such a real conversation together today and that we're sharing it with people. That's what matters. That's what is relatable and that's memorable. So I think it makes a greater impact sometimes.
Wendy, tell everybody where they can find the book. I know it's in pre-order right now. Let them know when it's gonna come out and where they can find you online.
[00:35:19] Wendy Snyder: Thank you, Penny. Yes, pre-orders help authors so much. So you can order anywhere books are sold, but then we have a pre-order page, freshstartfamilyonline.com/pre-order. Once you place your order, come and give us your order number because we have some really great bonuses for you.
We have a really beautiful journal and implementation guide that has a value of $45. We will be selling that for $45 once the book has published. And so you get to get it for free for now when you pre-order, and you still won't be charged till May 26th. So I think this is the most perfect Mother's Day gift.
Thank you. Just thank you in advance. Pre-orders really help authors. Places like Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble, they place orders based on our pre-order numbers as authors.
Instagram, I'm Fresh Start Wendy. Our podcast is The Fresh Start Family Show.
And then the last thing I will say, I know Penny, you and I have talked so much about how neurodiverse kids, most of them are like strong-willed kids, and really we specialize in strong-willed kids here, seeing the beauty in them, seeing them as blessings not curses, and really helping families understand how they can work with a strong-willed kid in a way that actually causes them to want to listen and cooperate instead of being forced to listen and cooperate. So we have a really great learning bundle they can download at freshstartfamilyonline.com/secrets where we teach three secrets to thriving with strong-willed kids.
[00:37:02] Penny Williams: Awesome. I will link everything up in the show notes too at parentingadhdandautism.com. Thank you, Wendy. It's always so much fun to chat with you, and I will see everybody next time. Take good care.
[00:37:15] Wendy Snyder: Thanks, Penny.