Episode 383: The Nervous System Budget, with Laura Petix
Lightly Edited Transcript

Penny: [00:00:00] Hello, parents and teachers. Welcome back to Beautifully Complex. I am thrilled to have occupational therapist Laura Petix back with us on the podcast. It's been, we think, at least a few years since Laura's been here, and so we're gonna have a new chat all about her new book, The Sensory Code, and the nervous system budget.

What is it? How does it help us when we are parenting or when we are in the classroom with kids? Laura, will you start by letting everybody know who you are and what you do? And then we'll jump in.

Laura Petix: Yes. Hello again, Penny, and to all of your community and listeners. It's so good to be back. My name is Laura Petix. I am a pediatric occupational therapist. Though I'm no longer in the clinic, I spend all of my time trying to brain dump all of my wisdom and nuggets from the field of occupational therapy, now alongside my lived experience of being a neurodivergent [00:01:00] mom to a neurodivergent daughter.

Penny, I think the last time we chatted, I didn't know I was neurodivergent at the time. So even though I was, of course, it's...

Penny: Yep.

Laura Petix: ...of putting those things together and really recognizing that as part of my identity and leaning into that. So that's a huge part of my content and education that I provide for parents and teachers and therapists, is what it's like as someone with lived experience.

Now I have better words to explain it, to talk about what that does to my nervous system and how that affects my parenting, how that affects my marriage, my friendships, and what it looks like to kind of unmask that part of me so I can really stop fighting against my nervous system and learn to work with it. And all along, also guiding my daughter to try to do the same and learning about her own nervous system and what her own body needs through an occupational therapy lens, which [00:02:00] looks a lot at the sensory systems, which we talked about in our first interview together. So now it's come kind of full circle, and I've packaged it up nicely in this book.

Penny: Awesome. And Laura has a robust and informative Instagram I encourage you to follow. I've been following for years. Just really, really friendly and down-to-earth real-life advice, and I love that. So thank you for that.

Laura Petix: ...you say that. Thank you.

Penny: So let's dive into this idea of a nervous system budget. Can you start by telling us what that even is?

Laura Petix: Yeah. So the best way to short explain this is if anyone is familiar with spoon theory, which is this theory mostly for the disabled community, when you hear people say, "You know, I don't have enough spoons for that," it sort of describes their mental bandwidth, their physical energy to be able to do things in their day. So it kind of was [00:03:00] inspired by that theory, but as a neurodivergent person, I wanted something with a little more structure, and being a little bit more objective. And I started talking about this theory when I was coaching parents of kids with a pervasive drive for autonomy, trying to encourage parents to see regulation proactively, to proactively support their kid's nervous system to sort of save them on the back end, because it's much easier to set up a child for regulation proactively than it is to pull them out of dysregulation. And a lot of parents were having a hard time understanding how proactive regulation works and why they should even really do that. And so that's how the nervous system budget was born, sort of. So if we think of our nervous systems, every single one of us, we all have a nervous system. [00:04:00] We imagine that they all have a certain capacity for regulation, to tolerate sensory input, cognitive demands, social demands, physical demands, and we all have our own unique individual threshold, which I call our budget, right? And everything we do in our day, putting on shoes, washing our face, eating, going to the bathroom, driving, doing homework, waiting in line, making dinner, every task we have in our day deducts a little bit from our budget. They all have a certain cost attached to it. What's different is for neurodivergent individuals, certain tasks might cost their nervous system more than what it would cost someone who is not neurodivergent.

So an example I always give is it might cost my daughter, who is sensory sensitive, it might cost her nervous system budget maybe $5. These numbers are arbitrary to anyone listening. You can use any monetary value [00:05:00] that is significant to you. But let's say it costs her $5 to wear socks, meaning it deducts $5 from her every day when she puts socks on, because her nervous system is prone to dysregulation when it comes to tactile stimulation.

She's oversensitive to that, and it takes away. Someone like my husband, or any other child who is not tactile sensitive, socks might cost their nervous system maybe a dollar. It wouldn't be completely free, 'cause it's still a task they have to do. But there's already a difference there, and you can see... if we think about all of the tasks our kids have to do, and if they have sensory sensitivities or executive functioning challenges, routines can be, quote, expensive...

Penny: Yeah.

Laura Petix: ...system, and we are sending them off to school with, like, a negative balance, right? If we talk about washing their face, brushing their hair, brushing their teeth, putting socks on, remembering to pack their lunch, hearing the dogs bark on the way out, getting [00:06:00] drips of wet grass on the bottom of their pants.

That is a huge trigger, right? That all deducts from their nervous system. And then I also talk about this idea of an added tax, which is these little extra costs to our nervous system that we don't always account for, that are there sort of passively from the environment. So if lights are really bright, or if last night I didn't get great sleep, and I'm feeling sick, and my baby sister is crying in the background. Now socks, instead of costing $5, if my baby sister's crying in the background at the same time, it might cost $5.50 today. It's just this idea that some tasks can feel harder or more stressful to the nervous system on different days, depending on the environment or what happened. So it's...

Penny: Right.

Laura Petix: ...in a vacuum.

I really want parents to understand that, because it's often the case that parents will say, "Well, they did it yesterday," or, "They were [00:07:00] fine...

Penny: Hmm.

Laura Petix: ...and now all of a sudden they can't." So I want them to understand that sometimes there's this extra tax that we don't account for. And then, so with the nervous system budget, the next question is, well, how do I increase my child's budget?

How do I make them a nervous system millionaire so they never get dysregulated, and they have all of the capacity in the world? And instead of asking that, the way that I teach parents is there are ways to make deposits to our child's nervous system budget throughout the day and to discount tasks. So when I'm talking about discounting tasks, I'm talking about providing accommodations, modifying the task. So if I bought my daughter shoes that didn't require socks, maybe putting shoes on would only cost her body a dollar. Or if I had her turn her socks inside out so the seam is on the outside, now that $5 task is $3, or maybe I buy her sensory [00:08:00] friendly socks. So you're kind of making the task easier by decreasing the sensory triggers. If you...

Penny: Right.

Laura Petix: ...the overhead lights when you're eating breakfast, does breakfast now become a $2 task? So that's how we can think about discounting tasks. Now, we can also add to our child's budget by integrating movements, actions, sensory strategies that are regulating to that child, and this can be different for each child. I know for my daughter, big things that add to her budget are one-on-one connection time, like getting us to laugh and talk about things that were funny, like talking about funny stories or memories. Cuddling, she is such a cuddle bug. It's something that deducts from my nervous system, but I know that adds to her nervous system, right? Some kids might like movement or swinging or jumping, and so if we can embed those into the [00:09:00] routines that they have, we can now add 50 cents back to her budget, maybe a dollar back to her budget before I send her off to school. The part that I really want parents to understand is that when our kids are at school, especially if they're in a traditional school, we're not homeschooling, we're not in maybe a private school or a charter school where we have more say in how their classroom is, if they're going to school for a big chunk of the day, we're not in control of their nervous system budget at that time.

Penny: Yeah.

Laura Petix: ...control what's deducting from them and what's expensive for them. So we want to think about setting them up for success with as much cash in their budget before they step through those doors, because what happens when they step back into our home or in the car, if they've got a negative $100 balance, it gets really hard to get back to regulation.

So that kind of [00:10:00] concept helps frame things for parents to understand why it's important to work ahead of noticing some of these behaviors.

Penny: Hmm. I love the proactivity, because I think we get, especially if we have kids who are more outwardly dysregulated, that fight or flight, we get so caught up in just trying to survive the day that we're not thinking about how could we be a little more proactive, right? And so thinking about the environment not being as taxing, not taking as much from them, right?

Like, you were talking about the mornings, and that was so hard for us. We could not do socks. We had trouble even with shoes. And I learned to, like, dim the lights. Don't turn on all the lights in the morning, which is what I need to wake up, otherwise I'm a zombie. But, like, don't turn on all the lights.

Don't talk at a normal voice. Lower your voice a little bit. Like, I just naturally learned over time to do those sort of things, [00:11:00] and I think that's what you're talking about, is, like, how can we make it less irritating almost for their nervous system, right? Because that costs them.

Laura Petix: That's exactly right, and I think that it's an easy place for parents to start. If you feel like you don't have energy or bandwidth to integrate, to add to their budget, to, like, input these sensory strategies and do all these things, a really low-hanging fruit way to do that, like you're saying, is passive. Just make tasks less expensive for them, and you can do that in so many ways by just changing the environment, and it will make a difference, especially if we're talking about sensory sensitivities.

That's a really easy way to help take the stress or load off of the nervous system. It makes such a big difference. Overhead lighting is like a four-letter word in this house, like it is a bad word. I do...

Penny: Yeah.

Laura Petix: ...lights. But we recognize that some folks have a [00:12:00] different sensory profile where they need it at certain times of their day.

So that brings up the conversation of how do you support families, classrooms with multiple different needs, like conflicting sensory needs, right? Some kids need sound and conversation to wake up, and other kids are like, "I will not be talked to." Adults, "Don't talk to me unless I've had my coffee, unless...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...minutes past this," right? And neither person has the right of way and is like, "Well, we have to cater to this person." It's something that reminds us that we as a society, and even in our home community, our classroom community, we have a collective responsibility to help our friends, our family, our classmates feel comfortable enough to express what they need, and if we can also support that, that's great.

If we can't, we also have a way to express our need and see if we can [00:13:00] creatively allow both to exist. So, you know, what that looks like is maybe if you are someone who needs bright lights in the morning to wake up, maybe you take a few minutes before your child comes downstairs and you do... You know, there's, like, light therapy lamps.

There's, you could stand in a room and do some stretches, some movement to wake up with some bright lights, step outside. Whatever it is that you need proactively for yourself...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...you then prepare the environment for your child, if you have separate spaces. But I want parents to understand that it's never...

'Cause I get this question a lot, like, "How can I regulate both my kids? Like, one needs this, the other one needs that." I want parents, and even teachers, to know that it's unrealistic to expect that you're gonna meet every single person's need in a room 100% of the time. That's just, it's not realistic. I think there's gonna be some people some days who need a little bit more support than others. I think some days you try your best to meet both of [00:14:00] their needs at different times, or maybe at the same time as best as you can, but you can't expect 100% regulation from every single person at every time. But still knowing how to provide the support maybe after, you know, if you have to tend to one child first to help them feel regulated, child B knows their own regulation strategies that maybe they could do later or on the side. It's just really impossible for us to meet every single person's needs at the same time, I think.

Penny: Yeah. I remember coaching a family a few years ago whose kids, when they came in the door from school, needed the polar opposite. One needed to get the energy out. They needed to move to feel good. The other one needed quiet stillness, and we had to work out, how do you make that happen? And really finding an activity for the one who needed quiet stillness, off in a [00:15:00] corner, was what was helpful.

You know, it helped to kind of separate, but it's difficult in those situations.

Laura Petix: In those situations, I've worked with families like that as well, pop-up tents are your best...

Penny: Mm.

Laura Petix: ...so easy to stow away. You can create their own separate space even in a shared room. Doesn't block out noise, but when you can block out the visual stimulation of someone bouncing up and down in the corner...

Penny: Yep.

Laura Petix: ...kind of cocoon, and even if you're, you know, it's apartment-friendly, renter-friendly, it stows away nice and flat if you need to, or create this permanent sort of hideaway in your own house.

But that's a really common challenge as well that I, as a parent of only one, I can only imagine what that's like, and I can only coach through these, like, just what I think I would do, but I've never been in the shoes of having to actually do that. So I can...

Penny: Yeah. It's really [00:16:00] tough. Let's talk a little bit about sensory seekers. We haven't really talked about that yet. We've talked about...

Laura Petix: Yeah.

Penny: ...but what about the kids who need more sensory input?

Laura Petix: Exactly. So like you said, the kids who are coming in from after school, after being required to sit still for most of their day, which might go against their nervous system needs, they really have this need for any one of the sensory systems. Most people, when we think of sensory seekers, we're picturing a kid who's jumping, bouncing, spinning, like a movement seeker, which is a...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...common sensory profile.

A movement seeker, a proprioceptive seeker. Kids who love to rough and tumble, push, squeeze, hang upside down, jump from really high surfaces, and potentially get injured. Those moms and dads and parents are probably working on their blood pressure a lot, because their kids are so close to getting injured or injuring other kids. These kids have a [00:17:00] high threshold for those kinds of sensory inputs, the vestibular and proprioceptive input. And when I say high threshold, it means their brain might require more intensity, more frequency, or longer duration of those kinds of movements and sensations in order for them to notice it or to feel regulated by it. So for you and I, spinning around and jumping might make us feel dizzy, nauseous, exhausted after two seconds of it, but someone with a high threshold can do that for so long, and it not only doesn't feel bad for them, it actually makes them feel more comfortable, more regulated, more able to focus. That's the idea behind neurodiversity, is that everyone has a different brain, right?

So the classroom, or any other time when you're expected to... when the social norm is to remain still, and they are not able to [00:18:00] move their bodies, this can still deduct from their nervous system budget...

Penny: Hmm.

Laura Petix: ...it requires so much cognitive effort in pushing against your natural instinct of what your body needs that that is also taxing to the nervous system, right? So it could also be something like a kid who is a sensory seeker is in a classroom all day, their teacher is not really allowing any alternative seating, they're getting yelled at every time they fidget, every time they get out of their chair. After school, they have to go straight to piano lessons, or they have to do homework club or something like that.

Then that task after school becomes very expensive for their body, because they have not been able to have their needs met throughout the day, right? So...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...what I often help parents and teachers understand is that it's, imagine your body had this, like, rash, or like when we weren't vaccinated [00:19:00] from chickenpox, and we all...

And if anyone here had chickenpox, and you were...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...to scratch. And I think of those, I think it was, was it The Brady Bunch? It was some show where they tie mittens around your hands. They literally are like, "Do not...

Penny: Friends. Mm-hmm. As in Friends.

Laura Petix: ...Don't scratch." What happens?

What do you see with a behavior? Right? You start wiggling around more. You start rubbing on sharp objects to scratch. If you have an itch that you can't scratch, you're gonna find a way to scratch it, or you're gonna stand there and sweat and be so dysregulated that you can't focus on anything.

You're gonna be so uncomfortable. The need and the discomfort from not meeting that need, it doesn't go away just because a teacher or a parent or someone says, "Sit still. Take that out of your...

Penny: Right.

Laura Petix: ...chewing. Stop touching that." Just because you say it, it doesn't make the need automatically disappear. Even if the child then stops fidgeting for a few [00:20:00] seconds or minutes, stops moving for a few seconds or a few minutes, looks like they were able to suppress that need. But what's gonna happen is their behavior is gonna show later that that need was not met, and it's sounding the alarms even louder.

So now you have...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...kid who's even more active, more disruptive, maybe more irritable, because they have been suppressing this need for a long time. So there's going to be a consequence if a sensory seeker cannot have their needs met.

Penny: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm always telling parents, like, after school, whatever your kid's sensory profile is, whatever they typically need, you've got to give it to them, right? Like, don't ask for homework, don't ask them even to put away their backpack and shoes yet, because they've been holding it in all day, especially the sensory seekers.

Like, give them what their body needs first.

Laura Petix: It really is that right-after-school routine thing, because I fall into that trap where I'm like, "Don't put your shoes there. [00:21:00] Go, you know where your backpack goes...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...lunchbox goes. Go do that before you forget." But just like you're saying, sometimes after school, it's like, they have been told what to do all day, they just got home. Give them some time to unwind or to move or whatever their body needs before you place another demand on them, because that backpack and lunch can still be put away by your child. You can still have them be independent in that, but does it have to be the very first thing they do when they get in the...

Penny: Right.

Laura Petix: ...if it's something that you know is not going to go well and just further tax their nervous system?

Penny: Mm-hmm. That's how we deposit in their nervous system budget, right? If they're coming in with a really low or negative budget, this is how we can start to make deposits so that...

Laura Petix: Exactly.

Penny: ...things are doable later. It makes that homework doable. It makes the other demands doable.

Laura Petix: Yeah, and when we're thinking of the negative budget, the negative [00:22:00] balance that we have in our nervous system, it also helps parents understand what we see a lot in January and February following all of the holidays when...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...to school and there's a lot of behaviors, and I have to explain to parents, I'm like, "You know, if you're a family, again, in a traditional school and traditional holiday celebrations, your kid has been having school parties and routine changes and temperature changes and clothing changes since Halloween.

We've got trunk-or-treat. We've got trick-or-treating. We've got Thanksgiving break. We've got Christmas parties, Hanukkah parties, candy all over, presents, sleeping at cousins' houses, family visiting, like nonstop fun, excitement, things that all are just deducting and deducting and deducting from our nervous system."

Penny: Yeah.

Laura Petix: ...We don't wake up with a fresh balance every day. Like, that negative balance rolls over. And [00:23:00] so a lot of times by January, February, they're in debt. They're in nervous system debt, and it's really hard for parents to grasp that and remember that. And if we can get parents to understand that, it might help add a little bit of compassion for their kids when that happens.

It might help give them a little bit of patience. It's not gonna solve everything just by understanding this, but once they can grasp that, then they can start focusing on more productive ways to support their kids, rather than just, you know, "Why are you like this?"

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...away and wanting it to just change on its own...

Penny: Yeah.

Laura Petix: ...need to start thinking about making changes around the holidays.

If you know that this is your child's pattern, then, you know, Christmas break, holiday break next year might need to look a little different, or you might need to be more creative.

Penny: For sure. Yeah. And I want to talk to you just a minute about, can [00:24:00] kids have both sensory profiles? Because I think this gets really confusing, and my own kid did. I say did, and he's a young adult now, so not really a kid anymore, he tells me. He's still my kid. I still call him kid, and he's like, "I'm not a kid," you know?

But it was kind of confounding to me sometimes, because he was very much a sensory seeker. He very much needed that proprioceptive input, right? He was Tigger. He was bouncing off of everything, but also, like, loud noises would send him into, you know, just a total panic really, right? And so there were differences there.

How can parents sort of navigate that, for one, but figure out, can they have that combination, and what does that look like? Like, how do we... I guess it's more of, like, how do we detail the sensory profile?

Laura Petix: Mm-hmm. Exactly. That's a really good question and something that's always brought up. So what you're describing is something that we usually call mixed [00:25:00] thresholds, right? Thresholds...

Penny: Gotcha.

Laura Petix: ...if you are over-responsive or sensitive, which is another word for that, or if you're under-responsive or, like, a sensory seeker, right?

So you can have thresholds across different sensory systems, like what you were describing. Your son is a vestibular seeker, proprioception seeker, and auditory sensitive or auditory avoider. So those are...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...sensory systems, different responses within one child. But you can also have mixed thresholds within the same sensory system.

So my daughter loves...

Penny: Ah.

Laura Petix: ...and loves soft, cozy blankets, so those are tactile inputs that she loves and can't get enough of, but she doesn't like sticky stuff. She doesn't like sand getting everywhere. She doesn't like gritty textures. Those are also tactile, so she's sensitive to that and wants more of the other.

And the best way for parents to [00:26:00] do this is really just, I always say, just a couple of weeks being a sensory detective, gathering all the clues and just being observant. Just observe before you even start any strategies, start implementing anything, just at baseline. Act like you're a scientist in the wild studying this rare species, and you're like, "This is their natural habitat.

This is what they do," right? Write it down. Talk about, you know, they wake up and it takes them 15 minutes to get out of bed and go downstairs. When they get downstairs, they are using a lower voice, minimal words. After school, they are bouncing, can't stop talking, their volume of voice is louder. Things that their body is seeking more of, and try to be as concrete as possible. So you don't have to say they're seeking tactile or vestibular input, because I wouldn't expect a parent to know that. But you could say, like, after school, they tend to [00:27:00] gravitate toward more hopping and jumping activities.

They're skipping the steps every time they go upstairs, versus in the morning, they're literally, like, slogging down the stairs. I notice they're always trying to touch something or squeeze something or fiddle with their hands. So just be objective and talk about what you're seeing, and then you can start to make a list of things they avoid or dislike or become stressed from, and things that they like, want more of, things that they tend to seek more. The thing that I will tell parents is that this could change. On Saturday, it might be something...

Penny: Yeah.

Laura Petix: ...it's really, if you think that it's all gonna fit nicely in, like, one nice column and one box, it's not. So don't be discouraged or feel confused if you're like, "Wait, I'm seeing something different today." Write it down, and at the very end, after two weeks, if you're like, "I'm seeing so many things," you can just say, "Okay, I know my child's nervous system needs mostly a lot of this stuff, except on weekends. Seems to be a little bit [00:28:00] different on weekends." That in and of itself is a very good start to understanding your child's sensory needs, however it may look. And it's kind of how I explain it in the book, in a sense of trying to just talk about it more from the behaviors, and saying, how can we take the behaviors that we're seeing and try to understand more of what they need? And don't be afraid to try something and then say, "That didn't work," but you really have to go into it as a scientist, as a detective looking at clues, trying something, and then writing down how that worked.

Penny: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it can change as they age too, right? Like, my kid doesn't bounce around anymore at all. He's almost a sloth. Like, he's so slow now and measured. Like, his body just doesn't need that anymore, or he's getting it another way maybe. Like, I'm not sure, [00:29:00]

Laura Petix: It's...

Penny: ...it changed.

Laura Petix: There's a few things. So in general, we tend to think that sensory profiles remain pretty steady throughout life, in the sense that he may still have a high threshold for proprioceptive and vestibular input, but as you mentioned, he is meeting it in other ways, or his frontal lobe has developed so much more now that his ability...

Penny: Mm.

Laura Petix: ...movements or channel them at different times of the day...

Penny: Right.

Laura Petix: ...unlocked, and he's able to do that.

But given the chance, and given the right time, would he still totally go for, like, rock climbing or activities that are more movement based? Can sensory profiles change throughout the lifespan? I think so. Of course, I'm not gonna say it's never going to, but I prefer parents to think that we want to teach our kids how to live with the sensory profile they have and how to accommodate their...

Penny: Yeah. [00:30:00]

Laura Petix: ...with the one that they have, rather than just, like, crossing fingers that it changes and stops when they're older, because...

Penny: Of course.

Laura Petix: ...give them the tools for success, right?

I just watched a reel of a kid starting college for the first time, and his college is right by the beach, and he said he got up at 5:00 AM to surf before his very first class of the day...

Penny: Hmm.

Laura Petix: ...what his body... And then he surfed, took a shower, came home, took a nap before his first class of the day, and it's like, that's how you make your lifestyle work.

Like, no, our six-year-old is not gonna need us to come to his dorm room and wake him up and do a sensory diet with him in his room, doing jumping jacks...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...around the room. But if I've taught my child well enough to know that you have options to accommodate your lifestyle, and you can make your schedule, your work, your school schedule work for you, and you know that your body needs to have this kind of input to function, you can be in charge of that yourself.

So, [00:31:00] having more access to the frontal lobe and the executive functioning skills to control certain impulses or inhibit certain things makes a difference, and then also just being able to find that input in different ways that feel less disruptive. We're not seeing our 25-year-olds jumping around and, like, hanging upside down on...

Penny: Yeah.

Laura Petix: ...But they find other ways to meet that need.

Penny: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's sort of like, I don't know, I found it very confounding until we saw an occupational therapist, and then they started to make so many things make sense for me. Proprioception was, like, this huge aha, right? And so I encourage parents to do that as well. Like, go out and get an OT evaluation.

They can help you determine that stuff as well, and they'll teach you what is going on. They'll help you understand it so that you can really sort of address the things that [00:32:00] need to be addressed in an appropriate way. But I think what you're really talking about is teaching kids from a young age to understand their body and follow the signals that they're getting from their body, whether it's a need or an avoidance. Be true to what your body is telling you.

Yeah.

Laura Petix: Exactly. And I think a lot of parents who are listening to this, if you have neurodivergent kids, there's a high likelihood that you yourself might be neurodivergent, and there's a lot of us who just realized it only within the last five years or so. So we are now trying to figure out what works for our body, and we are learning alongside our kids. And we didn't get these accommodations. We weren't taught this as kids, and now we're just trying to catch up and learn it now. Imagine how much better our kids' lives will be when they grow up, because they've learned what works for their body. They learned what doesn't work for their body. They learned how to advocate.

They learn how to adjust the environment that works best for them. And...

Penny: Mm-hmm.

Laura Petix: ...can surround [00:33:00] their life with schedules, with tools, with activities, with people that more fit into their lifestyle, rather than forcing themselves to, like, fit in with a community that doesn't feel good to their body.

Penny: Mm-hmm. It's a gift. It's really a gift to teach them about their body, because we didn't learn it, like you said. Like, I learned about regulation in my 40s because of my kids, right? And they were already older than I wish they had been to start teaching. So it's never too late, but the earlier the better, right?

And...

Laura Petix: I totally agree.

Penny: ...and Laura can help you learn how to do that more in her book, The Sensory Code. Will you tell everybody where to find the book and where to find you online?

Laura Petix: Yes. My book is carried in most major retailers, so you can kind of check your local bookstores. I'm a big supporter of independent bookstores, so I would at least call and see if they have it. But if you're just looking for convenient links [00:34:00] with a lot of different retailer links, you can head to my website, theotbutterfly.com/thesensorycode, and all links will be there, even international links as well, depending on where you're listening from. And you can find me always on Instagram @theotbutterfly.

Penny: Perfect. And I will link all of that up in the show notes to make it really easy for everyone too. Thank you, Laura, for coming back and sharing more of your sensory wisdom. It's always a pleasure, and I appreciate you giving some of your time to this audience.

Laura Petix: Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure to chat with you.

Penny: And I will see everybody next time. Take good care.