A Conversation with Dr. Gila About Supporting Single Parents of Neurodivergent Kids

Debbie:
Hey Gila, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Gila:
Thank you. I’m so excited. Such a big fan of the show and of you. Thank you for having me here. And I also wanted to say thanks for creating space for this topic, single parenting, because I think sometimes it’s overlooked. And so I appreciate you making space for that.

Debbie:
Thank you. Well, I’m so happy that we’ve connected. And, you know, I had such a good conversation. You had me on your podcast. And I was like, I need to bring Gila on to my show because I agree. It is an overlooked conversation. And when you’re already marginalized for one or multiple ways of parenting a neurodivergent kid, then to feel like even within that marginalized community, you have a separate experience is really isolating, I imagine.

Dr. Gila:
Yeah, it’s isolating and right. This sort of common experience of people don’t get it, right? So you’re often in spaces where it feels like people don’t really fully understand what your experience is. Yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah. Well, that’s why I’m so glad that you do the work that you do and you do support parents navigating a single parenting journey. But let’s talk about your story. I’d love parents to understand who you are and how you came to be doing this work and kind of, yeah, what your why is.

Dr. Gila:
Yeah, so I actually started out as a clinical psychologist and a neuropsychologist and I do have a separate therapy practice in New York State, a virtual practice. But what I found, what I like to say is that even with all of my fancy degrees and background and experience, single parenting a neurodivergent kid, I think has been like nothing has stretched me more, inspired me more, taught me more, challenged me more than this parenting journey. And so, you know, we had some challenges of our own that I was struggling to navigate. And I took a deep dive into trying to figure out how to support my kid through all of that in a way that was aligned with my own values. And of course that in and of itself is its own journey, right? Figuring out your own parenting values and how to kind of thread those needles, as it were. And in that process, I became really passionate about supporting other parents. And I do support partnered parents and single parents, but because of my lived experience and my passion about supporting single parents, I do have a lot of clients who are single parents. Yeah.

Debbie:
Well, you know, before I hit record, I was mentioning that I have a number of folks in my community who are single parenting for, you know, whatever their circumstances are. And it kind of always kind of stops me when we’re having a discussion about something and that they’ll mention this. And I’m like, yeah, like it’s a whole other layer, right? And so I’m wondering if we could start there and if you could share with us what are some of the realities of being a single parent of a neurodivergent kid that people who are outside of that experience may not even be aware of.

Dr. Gila:
Yeah. And I also, as you were talking, I was reminded, so at the beginning of my business I was debating whether to really lean into the single parent niche. And I was on Instagram, I think it was, and within the span of like five minutes, I saw three reels that were unintentionally kind of triggering for single parents, I think. And very well intentioned. Like there’s so many beautiful parenting resources out there. And very unintentionally triggering, but triggering nonetheless. And so I think one piece is that there are parts of the single parent experience that people sort of forget, right? Like, someone might not have someone to tag in. That’s a really common one, right? So saying, you know, well, have your husband watch the kids in the morning while you go for a walk is not a productive tip for a single parent. Or, you know, tagging in your partner when you notice that you’re about to snap or lose it, that is not realistic for single parents. So there’s a lot of things that single parents don’t have access to that in advice is often talked about. And then I also think it’s important to say there are blessings also. There are some things that can be silver linings. And so, you know, having the conversation about how do you lean into and really sort of accept your situation and how can we make this something that we see some of the blessings in it. Not — I am not a toxic positivity. Like I am all about let’s name, let’s acknowledge what’s really hard here and make space for you to have feelings about it. Like that’s honestly one big commonality, I think, for all. So, first of all, to back up for a minute, there’s a lot of paths to single parenting, a lot of flavors of single parent, as it were. And each situation has its own strengths and its own challenges. And even within that, different, like I know some single parents who are incredibly well supported and resourced. And I know some partnered parents who feel utterly and completely alone. And so I just want to — and I was that second category at first, right? I didn’t start out as a single parent. And I think I felt more alone in some ways when I was in an unsupportive, unequal partnership around parenting. So I just want to name that. I get a lot of people who come to me and say, technically, I’m not a single parent, but I really feel like one. So there’s variability in the experience. But I think one big commonality that most people feel at some point is a level of grief that I think we talk about sometimes around parenting a neurodivergent kid, right? Your life looks different than you probably expected it to, than you daydreamed of when you were, you know, imagining being a parent when you were like that 12-year-old self. And possibly different than you want it to right now. And giving yourself space and permission and the tools and the community to be able to name and feel the grief is, I think, a really important thing. And then there’s, of course, other commonalities also. I’d say one other really big one is some fear. A lot of different fears, but one fear is how your single parent status will affect your kids both right now and also in the future down the road.

Debbie:
I’d love it if you could expand on that, just to explain exactly what you mean. Because when you said that I had an idea in my mind, but I might have it completely wrong. So how might it affect their status? What is that fear really about?

Dr. Gila:
Yeah, so I think there’s a lot of fear about like, have I screwed up my kids by, you know, maybe you got divorced, right? So have I screwed up my kids by getting divorced or by marrying someone who ended up not being a supportive partner or maybe even a good parent, right? There’s a lot of guilt and fear around that. If someone is a single mom by choice or a single dad by choice, then there’s fears around not even having, right, being so different than society’s norm and what that — how that’s going to affect the child. Maybe they don’t have a father figure in their life at all. If you’re divorced, that might also be true. And then, of course, widowhood is certainly not something that anyone has chosen. But there’s still fear around how that experience is going to affect your child long term. In that situation, of course, we have a lot of grief like capital G grief. And, you know, that is something that is going to be a pretty big life inflection point and something that affects the kids. And so there are a lot of fears about that. And then sort of on a like more in the moment, like present phase, right? You have Father’s Day projects at school that might be hard for your child if they don’t have a father. You have, you know, maybe your kid can’t do as many activities as other kids because you simply can’t take them, right? Like just the logistics of it makes it hard to do some things. And you know, there’s so many ways that it can kind of affect your reality. And so there can be fears around that.

Debbie:
Okay. Thank you for that. So you just shared some of the kind of common challenges that single parents might be experiencing or the commonalities that you see. And one of the things I’d like to explore more, because this is something I definitely hear a lot about, is just that the load, the mental load, the emotional load, the cognitive load. Like I, you know, and you did touch upon this, but I want to go deeper. I think about just the, you know, the benefits of having someone to say, you know what, I am handing you the baton, I’m out of here. Right. And not having that person. And as you said, some people are more resourced with extended family and things like that. But can we talk more about the kind of toll that it can take on a parent who’s really in it when they don’t have that?

Dr. Gila:
Yeah. Absolutely. It is probably emotionally one of the hardest things. And, you know, I think I like to say that stress is the great magnifier. And single parenting brings with it a lot of stresses, or it can bring with it a lot of stresses. And what I mean by it’s the great magnifier is that it takes things that are important for everyone and makes them more important. And it takes things that are challenging for everyone and makes it more challenging. And so meltdowns, for example, you know, when your kid is having a massive meltdown or a rage, that’s challenging for everyone. When you don’t have anyone else, not only no one else to tag in, but another thing I want to mention here, especially as you mentioned, like the mental load, maybe you don’t have anyone to debrief with afterwards, right? You don’t have anyone to commiserate with, like, my God, it was a really tough day today, or you know, our kid is really struggling right now. If you don’t have that, that really does add to the burden. And so, you know, I think just in terms of naming that, right? Like I just want to name it because even just acknowledging that can feel like — I’ve seen parents just sort of relax and their nervous system just sort of take a minute to feel seen and heard and validated in that experience, that there’s a lot of little and big ways where it can be hard. Yeah. And so the things that I often recommend around this, I recommend for everyone, but again, it may be even more important to prioritize for a single parent. And so that includes things like finding ways to get that support. Let’s get creative to get you some space where you can get the validation, be seen and heard, be able to sort of emote and vent. And for some people, that’s yourself. That’s journaling, right? I’m a big fan of journaling. You know, if all else fails, you have yourself. And one thing that I often recommend that people sometimes haven’t thought of is audio journaling. So this would be like just opening your voice memo app or there are journals — I use Day One as a journaling app, and you can record a voice entry. And that can — some — because for some people, writing might not — might be hard or might not feel as supportive. So, you know, be your own sounding board and I know it sounds like you’re just talking to yourself, but there’s something different about putting it somewhere, right? About knowing that it is landing. And your brain is like, okay, I have put it somewhere, my brain can now let go of it, right? I’ve saved it somewhere, it’s real because it’s there. I am a big believer in finding communities of some sort or another, even if it’s simply an online Facebook group, although, of course, you know, depending on the group, there’s pluses and minuses to that. But even simply a Facebook group where people sort of are supportive and get it can help with that feeling of loneliness and getting creative and really sort of experimenting with — I don’t like the word pushing, but like with expanding your comfort zone around reaching out to people for support, which is much easier said than done for a lot of parents, myself included. So that’s one piece is making the space for the big prickly feelings, getting community and getting support in some form or another. And then another big piece is really again giving yourself permission to prioritize your needs and your family’s needs. I think that we have so many, like society has so many expectations and like you just need to and you should and you have to. And it’s so everywhere that we have internalized them, right? So we have these beliefs. I need to do this. I have to do this. And when we pause and look at all the need-to’s and have-to’s and shoulds, a lot of them we don’t really need to, and we don’t really have to. And when you have a family that looks different than the typical family, whether it’s because you have a neurodivergent kid or you don’t have a partner or both, sometimes our priorities and our have-to’s and need-to’s are different than what we thought they would be and what society says they should be. And so really giving yourself permission to make values aligned decisions for your family.

Debbie:
Yeah. Okay. Yes. I love that. Because I think this idea of values-based parenting is another thing that we think we kind of all know what that is. And in reality, like, you know, there’s a process to even identifying getting back to what that is. So I know this is probably some of the work that you do with parents, but how do we kind of come back to that if we’re parenting on default mode and or survival mode?

Dr. Gila:
Yeah, it is some of the work that I do with parents. And it takes a lot of unlearning sometimes, right? Like I often say, parenting a neurodivergent kid is like a constant process in recalibrating our expectations and priorities. And I think that’s true about single parenting also. And then when you combine them, single parenting a neurodivergent kid, you know, even more so. So, you know, is it important for them to do five different after school activities, or is it more important for you to not feel really stressed out after school, or for your child to not feel really stressed out because they’re, you know, scheduled here, there, and everywhere? And the answer — and I don’t mean that as, you know, for some families, it actually works better when the kid has a lot of activities. So I’m giving that as an example, but it doesn’t — there’s no one size fits all, right? So it really does take that pause, because we are doing — like you said, we’re like autopilot on some of the things that we’re doing and saying yes to and prioritizing. And so that pause and getting to know your own capacity needs, your own sensory needs, and your child’s capacity needs and sensory needs. And that is a process, right? It is a process. I have an analogy that I like to use. That is — it’s a metaphorical sink that we all have this sink inside of us. And when the sink is really full, just a few more drops of water make the sink overflow. And that’s when you can’t handle it, when you’re dysregulated, when you’re snapping and yelling and saying things that you regret. And when your sink is emptier, the same drops of water that made it overflow in the first scenario, you have room for it and more. And the priority thing I think of as the faucet. So there’s so much coming into our sinks at all times. Some of it we don’t have control over. Like maybe you don’t do well when there’s a lot of snow and not a lot of sunshine. And you know, today you might not have control over that. You could move or something like that, but right now you don’t have control over it. But there’s a lot of things that we don’t think we have control over that we actually do. And so being mindful of what we’re letting into our sink, so to speak. And then the other piece is often there are clogs in our drain. And if you think about it, right, I have hair that, you know, at the end of a shower, I get like the hair clogs. If you have a clogged drain, you can do all the deep breathing and meditating that you want. Your sink is still going to be really full a lot of the time. And so what are some things that are clogging your drain? And you know, really getting to know your own personal things that fill your sink, things that clog your drain, and your child’s. Because — and this is the last thing I’ll say about the sink, and then I’ll pause — is that one of the things that can fill your sink really quickly is somebody else’s sink overflowing into it. And that is often what happens when our kids are having a hard time if our sink is really full already, our kid having a hard time, their sink overflowing, it’s gonna be really hard for us to handle. And this is yet another reason why it’s so important to prioritize taking care of ourselves and our own sinks. And that might mean saying no to things that, you know, in an ideal world you would want to say yes to.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s great. I love a good metaphor. So thank you for that. It was — I wanted to ask you about your sink model because I have heard you talk about that. Okay, so before the break, you walked us through the sink model, this metaphor of the clogs and you know, just those extra drops can completely tip over. And I want to talk about those really difficult moments, which I can, you know, we’ve all experienced them. Anyone listening to the show has been in situations with our kids where we feel like I cannot do this anymore. And we, you know, our kid is exploding or it’s just incredibly dysregulated. It’s contagious. We’re dysregulated. And we have a little kid and we can’t walk out the door, even though that may be what we want to do. So what do you say to parents who don’t have somebody to again kind of step in and give them that relief? What’s the strategy?

Dr. Gila:
Yeah. So this is a huge topic, of course. And this is a lot of what I work with parents on. What I will say is again, everything applies to partnered parents also, but like even more so. The first thing I want to say is your sink is going to overflow. I don’t care who you are, at some point your sink is gonna overflow. You’re not going to handle their meltdown as well as you wanted to. You’re going to say the thing you thought you’d never say. You know, you’re gonna hear your mom’s words coming out of your mouth that you swore you would never say, and it’s going to happen. And that is because you’re human. And so, first of all, to give yourself some grace and some compassion and some tools for what to do when your sink is overflowing. So that’s one thing that I work on with parents. And how do we repair afterwards, right? Because pretending that your sink is never going to overflow is just not, you know, realistic. The second thing is that this is why it is so important to do the proactive preventative tending to our sinks work outside of those really tough moments, right? For everyone. And then even more so if there’s no one to tag in, because if you’re going into that moment with a full sink it’s going to be so, so hard, right? So, so hard. And then the third piece is learning to catch things early, right? So prevention is ideal. Second best is early intervention. So learning to notice when your sink and your child’s sink are getting really full. And one of the things, one of the phrases that I actually — I think I heard it from Sandy Lerman years ago, who’s another parenting coach — is stop, drop, and roll. So as soon as you can tell your child’s sink is getting really full, things are, you know, getting to that place where, boy, we might be heading into a storm, as it were, that you stop what you’re doing. So we have a tendency to be like, I just really need to finish the dishes. And you’re trying to handle them while you’re doing the dishes. We’re gonna stop, stop what you’re doing. You’re gonna drop your agenda. So let’s say you’re butting heads about something, it’s a power struggle. This doesn’t mean that you quote unquote give in and they get whatever they want. It means in the moment, while they’re in that really like overflowing sink state, we’re not talking about the thing that we’re disagreeing with. We are dropping the agenda and then roll with it. Roll, ride the wave, right? Imagine — and one of the things I like to do with parents is come up with your personal visual or mantra that helps you in the moment be able to ride that wave without it consuming you. Right. So maybe we put a visual bubble around yourself. Maybe — so one thing, if your child has really big meltdowns, rages, violent, right? I like the idea of it’s as if they are having a seizure or throwing up or something like that. It is, of course, not exactly the same. There are very important differences. But when you can see your child as having a hard time instead of giving you a hard time, that core reframe, when you can stay in that place, it’s so much easier to bring that compassion. When you can see that they are struggling and they are hurting, we go into caretaking mode and compassion mode. When we feel like they are being manipulative, attacking, they are being defiant, all of these other adjectives, your nervous system is going to react with anger and resentment. And all of that is going to make it much harder to support them with compassion. And then again, what happens is their sink is overflowing into yours, yours is overflowing into theirs. We have a big puddle on —

Debbie:
Yeah. The beauty of mirror neurons. Yes. I really appreciate all those strategies. I love that metaphor. And yeah, I’ve had Sandy on the show years ago, and I’ll have a link to that in the show notes pages if listeners want to go check that out. But I love that. I think about dropping the rope. That’s something that my therapist has taught me to do. Just drop the rope, just let the rope drop it and move along. And I’ll share two things that I thought of as you were talking about that. One is what Dr. Mona Delahooke — the question that she encouraged me to really embrace related to the nervous system is looking at a dysregulated child and say, what does your nervous system need right now? Because it neutralizes it, right? As you were saying, it enables you to show up with that compassion. And the visual that has helped me in particular with big dysregulation is picturing my child kind of standing up in a tree, like kind of waving wildly and shaking the tree branches and all this stuff. And then my job is to not climb up the tree. My job is to stay on the ground and just be there, the steady kind of presence. But yeah, it is high level stuff. And I appreciate how you started that whole answer is that it’s gonna happen. Like we are, you know, every parent is gonna get dysregulated, is going to catch their kids dysregulation. That’s why repair is such a beautiful thing. And I think repair can actually bring us closer to our kids at the end of the day when we do it from an authentic place. So thanks for everything there that you just shared. I want to ask one more bigger question and then we’ll start to wrap up. And I’m thinking about siblings because we’ve been talking about one parent, and really the examples have been one child. And so we know that in mixed neurotype households where there’s multiple children with multiple needs, support needs, nervous systems, sensory systems, and then you know, the advice when you’re parenting multiple children with different needs is to make sure you have dedicated time for each one and how do how does a single parent with multiple children make it work so that everybody feels like they are being seen and that their needs are being met?

Dr. Gila:
Yeah, I thought you were gonna ask in the meltdown moment, which is a whole other thing, right? We do need to think about if there are other kids in the home and you have one child having a big meltdown. So this is where — just to quickly say that — one of my pet peeves when I was going through like my roughest parenting moments and I would reach out for help, one of my pet peeves was that all the advice was about how to prevent that from happening. Which is, of course, extremely important. We ultimately want to work on prevention. But I think it’s really important to first come up with a plan for the really hard moments. Because your nervous system, if you don’t have a plan, you know, my son used to have food allergies. And I remember just having an EpiPen nearby like put me more at ease. I had a plan. I knew what to do if something happened, God forbid. And so I think it’s really important to outside of those moments, think through what is the plan. So if you have multiple kids and you have one who has really big explosive meltdowns, what is the plan for the other child? And how do you work on that outside of those moments so that that child is, you know, getting their needs met, which is sort of like a special circumstance of the bigger picture question that you’re asking. So yeah, I think it can be really challenging and we have to get creative. It depends on the kids’ ages. And like maybe one of them is — so especially if you have neurodivergent kids, maybe one of them is in their OT appointment and you have some special time with the other child while they’re at their appointment, or maybe you’re taking the kid out of school early to go to OT and that’s your special time with that kid in the car on the way over. So we need to get creative about how to fit it into the nooks and crannies and make sure that the other child isn’t feeling left out when you’re having some one on one time. But I do think at the end of the day, like the big picture point here is that it is still really important to find ways to connect, even if it’s five minutes before, you know, while you’re putting them to bed or something like that, to find ways to connect with each child in their own right. And it is also valuable to have connection time where it’s not just you and one child, right? So we do need to sometimes get creative about how to make it work. And again, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s not going to be perfect, right? So leaning into the reality of what your life looks like and trying to optimize that. And I like to remind parents, you know, when we talk about creating connection, prioritizing connection, parents often think of taking them to the amusement park and like going to their favorite restaurant and all these like big things. And actually small connection moments can be so powerful. And maybe even more so because you can bake them into your everyday life. And so it might mean a five minute conversation with them where the other kid is doing something else. It might mean sitting side by side and each of you reading a book, right? It can look different ways. And getting creative about that is I think definitely something worth investing time and attention into.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s great. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. So okay, we are gonna wrap up, but I have two questions. I was gonna just stick with one, but I’m gonna go for two. So I guess the first one is for a listener who is kind of white knuckling it at the moment and they’re single parenting, what would be kind of one word of hope or yeah, just something like a nugget that could help them feel like, okay, I can do this. It’s gonna be okay. What would you say to them?

Dr. Gila:
So much. How do I choose? So I think one thing that I want to say is that every child needs one healthy connection relationship and you are your child’s best asset and you are enough. Yeah. You know, I think that I mentioned blessings of single parenting before, and I want to mention one of them here. And that is the beauty of single parenting is that you get to choose what relationship looks like in your home. You are in the driver’s seat. And that is a big responsibility, I’m not gonna lie, but it is also hopefully empowering that you are — you get to say — you get to create what relationship looks like in your home.

Debbie:
Yeah. That’s a big deal. Yeah. Okay, thank you. And then I guess I just wanna acknowledge that we have just scratched the surface and touched upon what I think are probably some of the key questions that my listeners might have, but there’s so much more to this experience that we can’t possibly get into in this conversation, but that’s why I want to make sure that listeners know about your resources and how you support parents. So would you take a few minutes and just talk about the way that listeners can engage with you and how you work with families?

Dr. Gila:
Yeah, absolutely. So, first of all, I also have a podcast that you were on. So if anyone — you clearly like podcasts, so come check it out. It’s called Single Parenting with Connection, not perfection. And I also have some free resources. I will make a page for you. We’ll say parenting with connection and one resource that I would recommend here is I have a printable guide called the Single Parents Guide to Challenging Episodes. And I also have a guided meditation for single parents. So I will share those with you. And yeah, I think that if you are feeling like you’re alone in this, that’s the other thing that I want to say: is that I have so many people reach out saying, yes, I’m a single parent and it does feel so lonely and overwhelming. And so if that can be that word of reassurance that you are not alone in it, yeah.

Debbie:
That’s wonderful. Thank you. And also I love a guest who makes a page just for my listeners. So thank you for that. And listeners, I will have an extensive show notes page where you can connect and dive into Gila’s work. And I’ll have a couple other episodes of past conversations that you might want to check out as well. So thank you. This has been super insightful and I really I’m so glad that we’ve connected and to have this opportunity to share you with my community. So thank you, Gila.

Dr. Gila:
Thank you so much for having me.