Navigating the Complexities of Autism and Education: Insights from Victoria Lenormand

Victoria Lenormand 00:00:39

The conversation with the school about what was working, what wasn't working, and when the list of what was working was longer than the list of what was working and the value that our child had and that we had as his family supporting him, the value was all in the stuff that wasn't working. That was when we chose to withdraw. And I think that's as individual as we all are. But if you, if anybody is at that stage, we do try to support people as our, our business. We build a community of a, a very non judgmental space that says, it just acknowledges that this is where you are, it's a safe place to put that this is what I'm considering and try to help signpost people to the myriad of possibilities that are now out there. I don't think he would that anybody in the school intended for him to learn that he had no value, but that's how he felt is he had no value, he had nothing to offer, he couldn't tick the boxes. Therefore he was naughty, he was in trouble. And it doesn't matter that you have these diagnosis and inclusion strategies. It doesn't seem to translate in practice. So we, we hit a bit of a crisis and I wasn't prepared to let him slide any further down than he actually had. So looking at him one morning and realizing that he was in, in that place of not being able to come back out was just, just before COVID during COVID that's when we got to see him at home. Learning and trying to instill a love of learning in our child have been a major challenge up to the age of about 6.

Mark Taylor 00:02:22

Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Far podcast, the place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world. Listen to teachers, parents and mentors share how they are supporting children to live their best authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all. Hello, welcome back to Education on Fire. Today I'm delighted to be chatting to Victoria Lenormand and she's the author of the Magic of Not Fitting In. Now, their story is that of a mum, a dad, their work, two sons and an autism diagnosis, the school, and a whole lot of questions about trying to fit in. Now Victoria takes us on their journey of how their lives were changed in order to support their son's learning. And this includes changes in their careers, education, location, and most importantly, how and why they live their life the way they do now. Hi Victoria, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Far podcast. I think one thing Everybody knows is that having the child, our child, any child at the center of what we're going to be talking about on the podcast is the most important thing. And the other thing talk about so much is how the education system per se is great for some small middle part of everybody's sort of community and the country. And then either end of the spectrum, it doesn't work for so many people. And a lot of people are able to stay in it, but there are people who actually find other ways to do it. So I think your story and your journey is going to be a really fascinating conversation. So, yeah, thank you so much for being here.

Victoria Lenormand 00:03:52

Oh, thanks for having me, Mark. I'm really grateful to be here. Really am. Thank you.

Mark Taylor 00:03:56

So why don't you tell everybody where you are in the world, first of all, because I'm not sure, actually, that's not sure. We haven't had a Scottish person before or someone living in Scotland, but I know it's been a little while. So yeah, tell us about that journey and living there.

Victoria Lenormand 00:04:10

So, yeah, my journey started on the south coast of England. That's where I grew up. And I was schooled and, and, and I started working in law enforcement. I ended up moving to Guernsey in the Channel Islands and then with an education system that wasn't fitting my child's needs at that particular point. So he was diagnosed with. We, we, we ended up having a massive rethink, a massive rethink about how we did life. So we have two sons. Our eldest went straight through education system, ticking various boxes, loving the arts, absolutely loving the arts. So I have two very creative boys, but differently creative. And he found his way through with most of his interest being extracurricular until he hit A levels and then university for musical theatre. That was our eldest at the time that he was heading to university for musical theater. The, our youngest was really struggling to the point of mental health crisis in trying to fit, desperately trying to fit an education system. And my husband and I were struggling, trying to meet the need and the fit and just trying to keep a happy little boy, really, because I think that's what most of us aim for when we put our child at the very center is, are you happy? Are you healthy? Are you thriving? And that's what they were the questions we were asking. We weren't able to take those boxes for him up to about the age of six. So we had diagnosis at three. Sensory processing, autism, possibly. Some other things to be considering as well. And as we know, it's, it's a Huge spectrum. It shows up differently for everybody. But our child just could not sit still, really understand what was required of him in class was learning all the things that weren't intended to be taught him. I don't think he was that anybody in the school intended for him to learn that he had no value. But that's how he felt is he had no value. He had nothing to offer, he couldn't tick the boxes. Therefore he was naughty, he was in trouble. And it doesn't matter that you have these diagnosis and inclusion strategies. It doesn't seem to translate in practice. So we, we hit a bit of a crisis and I wasn't prepared to let him slide any further down than he actually had. So looking at him one morning and realizing that he was in. In that place of not being able to come back out was just. Just before COVID during COVID That's when we got to see him at home. Learning and trying to instill a love of learning in our child have been a major challenge up to the age of about 6. It's been such a challenge for, for everybody involved. You know, there are groups of people and services. We're not entirely on our own at that point, but we certainly were when we decided to say this isn't working. And I don't think with the very best intentions that are here that it is actually going to improve. I think it's. We, we've. I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall and now it just hurts. So maybe I need to find a door. I needed a door. So we, we opened a different door when, when we looked at him with the lessons that were coming home during that period of time and how quickly he was able to meet the academic requirement within a couple of hours in the morning and then understand that the day was his. He very quickly crafted his own day. And I could see the benefits of him having some autonomy around his learning and his choice around. I'm doing the bit you want now. I'm explore. And that's when he lit up. That's when you could see this little, this little buzz, this little spark that was uniquely him actually came to life. And there was exploration and discovery and a multitude of questions that he could ask at home that he couldn't do in a classroom because he's interrupting. And I thought actually we might need to, we might need to rethink here and meet that need until maybe he's old enough to have a little bit more self control. Maybe that will come later and we're okay with that. As his parents, we're okay that it would come later. But our system isn't. It's not that the teacher wasn't. It's just our system doesn't allow for it. So that's why he's constantly being graded down and you think. And it's making him feel awful. So that's pretty much our story. We ended up. You asked how we ended up being in Scotland as we moved over here with our eldest for university. He came to, to Glasgow for university and we decided to really bite the bullet. Rented out the house, left employment, moved into a motorhome and brought our youngest with us because there was a certain amount of security that came with having the motorhome as his home. So in our book I've, I've drawn it as like a snail, he's like a sn. He's taking his house with him and that brought the security and then he could explore freely. So we made exploration the learning journey so that he could start to enjoy it a little bit more and find a love of learning. I mean, I have it. I love, I love to learn. It's. Yes, it's challenging, yes, it's got issues. But to watch him struggle with that was really hard for me to, to witness is that he couldn't find a love of learning. And I thought, okay, we will change it. So we moved, came to, came to Glasgow to drop off. Our eldest ended up touring around Scotland and our youngest just fell in love with Scotland and three years later we made a permanent move.

Mark Taylor 00:10:13

Amazing. And, and I think the biggest sort of takeaway is that sense of it's not even a love of learning, is it? That doesn't work. It's a, it's a love of learning or doing it in a particular way. Because like I say, if you can almost immediately see if the circumstances are different or the way that it's coming across is different and the like say the face lights up or you can see that passion starting to go. It's just that it doesn't work in a way that it ought to in adverted commas that we're sort of told, you know, it's about inclusion in school, but only still included in a way which is right for the majority or the thing that works best in the system that's already there. And so yeah, the first thing we.

Victoria Lenormand 00:10:50

Miss with inclusion is we don't ask how people would like to be included. Yeah, that's very individual, isn't it? You know, he said, would you like to be Included in this. Good grief. No, it's fine. That's not inclusion at that point. That's forcing. Yeah, exactly. It's very difficult, isn't it? It's, and I do, I feel for the, the system. It's, it's, it's. I'm a police officer by experience, like 28, eight years of serving in, in investigation roles and it's, it's the same across our services. It's not just teaching, it's a lot of friends that work in the health service and you can see it's, it's really struggling to tick boxes in the system. It's losing, it's losing the value. So I mean, for me education is about a love, lifelong love of learning how to learn where to go and how to find yourself in that. So that really we all know if you, if you do something you love, you don't work a day in your life really, do you? It's, it's a joy. You don't get sick and you don't get any of these problems because you're just loving life. But if we've become all about the metrics and we have across so many of our systems, we've lost the magic that, that Sir Ken Robinson talks about. We were saying earlier, he, you know, he talks about that magic that, that gift of teaching and that gift of, you know, community law enforcement. We lose the gift that, those skills, those skilled at those work, those, those types of work that we lose that because we've systemized it and it's over measured and there's no ability to really include. Because community is all about inclusion for sure.

Mark Taylor 00:12:34

And I think I, I also think the amazing thing is, is that we talk about well being and we talk about doing what people need to do to, to survive in their best possible way. But there's still this distinct difference between a physical need and an emotional need or a wellbeing need or whatever that happens to be. Because if you have a child in your school who's in a wheelchair, then there needs to be an obvious provision whether that's changing the room, whether it's having a lift, whether, whatever it happens to be. And yet we have more people in need that don't have a visual disability, but we're not able to make that difference or we're not able to go and give them what they need yet you wonder whether that will change or whether just the sheer number numbers is going to make it really difficult. But like you say, it does need a complete rethink in order to support the majority of people in that sort of mainstream situation.

Victoria Lenormand 00:13:24

Absolutely. And even the buildings that we have, you know, some of them can be really unkind. Not, you know, for physical disability, but we would necessarily consider that accessibility on that basis. But we don't think about lighting and we don't think about the loudness for, you know, for, for, for non visible disability or different ability as a, prefer to think about it. It's a different skill. It's just not. It may not be typical and it may be harder to measure against a standard that possibly doesn't apply anymore.

Mark Taylor 00:13:57

Yeah. And I love the way you sort of made that distinction between sort of the learning and for how long. I'm, I've just been recording a series with Professor Dr. Gay Grace about his book Through a Different Lens. And that whole thing about schooling is, you know, the 15 years or so when you're young, but education is, you know, naught to 99. You know, it's about giving people the skills and the love that they need all of their life. I think we all know as adults we're learning all the time. You know, I certainly didn't learn about podcasting when I was at primary school or even in secondary school, but the love of finding something that kind of worked, you know, is something that happens all the time and it's such a key element.

Victoria Lenormand 00:14:35

I, I couldn't agree more. I could not agree more. And I think there are many. We still have very systemized approach to, you know, careers and learning and the careers are changing vastly, aren't we? We do not know what the future looks like. It's quite possible that my son's career doesn't ex, he could create something. And I'm, I think being open to that doesn't have to be as individual as it, as it is for homemade people or those looking at alternative methods of education at the moment, or alternative methods of learning. As you say, it's a, it's a lifelong thing and, and I've, I've had to really work on that with both of my children to explain that mistakes are actually a fundamental part of learning. They're, they're not a self critique and they're not something you take away and beat yourself up about. They're a first class look at, ah, that didn't work.

Mark Taylor 00:15:27

Yeah.

Victoria Lenormand 00:15:27

So why didn't it work? And, and you know, being kind to yourself about that and forgiving yourself for that. And I think sometimes that big yucky cross that you get against things, it's, it's possibly, you know, Going a little deeper than maybe we think it does. Maybe if you're getting too many of those crosses that really isn't. You're going to start learning the wrong things. Don't make a mistake.

Mark Taylor 00:15:50

Yeah.

Victoria Lenormand 00:15:51

Fear of making a mistake is, you know, that's, that's not learning.

Mark Taylor 00:15:55

Yeah. My hope, I think, is that with the, the world of AI coming and like you say, the way people are going to be having different jobs and just a different lifestyle is that if you don't have a traditional setting of learning that everybody just assumes is school or whatever, in some ways kind of puts you say, ahead of the curve because everybody's different in their circumstances, are there? But that kind of. If I do this plus this, plus this, I do primary, secondary, university or apprenticeship or whatever, then my life is then set up. But like I say, that life isn't set up for anything that we know about now and it's going to be very changed. So actually knowing that you can take ownership of it, even if it's the support of your family that can see that you need to take ownership when you're younger or as you get older to say, no, actually this isn't right for me. I'm going to learn in this way there. What are my options? Does it have to look this traditional way or can, can I do it a different way? I think that's just going to give the skills and the opportunity and the experience in the environment that you need to thrive going forward, whatever that may look like.

Victoria Lenormand 00:16:54

Yes. Yeah, I completely agree and I think when I look at co workers and people that I'm with now and that, you know, some just leaving school or just leaving university, they get a little lost with that lack of script. And sometimes you really need that script. I mean, it was the same myself. I had only done the work that I've been doing, so it's. I felt quite genuinely nervous at the idea of not doing it, actually. I'm. Is my identity attached a little bit to this, am I? I told myself that I am just this. And when, in fact there's a. We talk about it as adults, as transferable skills, don't we? We talk about, about these, these qualities that we have. But I don't think we necessarily teach our youngest minds or encourage our youngest minds to understand that there's a lot of movement, it's not scripted, it's. We aim for something and there are several branches that could fall off of that. And being open to those possibilities is where you're gonna find a love of Something, you know, if you, your spark is here at the moment our spark is rugby. We have a big rugby spot going on. We have a lot of singing going on as well. But. And we have a big rugby spark going on. And, and, and it's just beautiful to sit and watch the autonomy that comes with that natural interest without applying pressure to it that it's got to look like a certain thing or it's got to end up being like that. Take, take the end result away and just enjoy where you are now and get the very most out of that that you can. You know, just. Yeah, I think sometimes we forget we're so busy planning for a future, we don't know what it looks like for sure. Be in the moment, be in the now. And it's a. You feel well at that particular moment. I think that's the key to, to keeping yourself well and healthy is to actually be in that moment. And the day that you're not liking it, if it becomes a pattern of not liking it, you know, you need to find another direction. There's nothing wrong with you doing that. It's just finding another direction. It's okay.

Mark Taylor 00:18:57

Yeah. And I think anyone who's got enough experience in life to know that my life as 20 year old isn't the same as it is as a 40 year old or whatever it happens to be, and so you can see it with that perspective but like say, harder to make those differences when maybe there's only a few years in between. So for those people listening who are thinking this sounds like something maybe I need to do to support my child, or maybe like say, keep trying to reinvent the wheel within the traditional system isn't working and there are people out there like yourself who've changed it. How did that look? First of all, you know, was it just a question of, right, that's the end of school, we're going to do it ourselves. How do I do it myself? How much support do I need? Where do I go? So just sort of those sort of initial thoughts and conversations to kind of get that ball rolling.

Victoria Lenormand 00:19:46

Yeah, it was a very big conversation with the school about what was working, what wasn't working, and when. The list of what wasn't working was longer than the list of what was working and the value that our child had and that we had as his family supporting him. The value was all in the stuff that wasn't working. That was when we chose to withdraw. And I think that's as individual as we all are. But if you, if anybody is at that stage we do try to support people as our business. We build a community of a very non judgmental space that says it just acknowledges that this is where you are. It's a safe place to put that. This is what I'm considering and try to help signpost people to the myriad of possibilities that are now out there of you can part time school. With some schools you might find that withdrawing just a little bit and reducing subjects, maybe that works for you. Maybe it is a complete withdrawal because your child is not emotionally ready for that kind of socialization. Because as much as I've heard repeatedly from from school environments that we're not here to socialize, it's a very. So also the very first thing they say when you withdraw your child from school is what about their social skills? I'm thinking, I think we have to recognize there is some socialization going on in that environment in the peer group and if that's not working, that it's okay to withdraw and either try again or withdraw completely. You don't have to make those absolute cut off decisions. If you're not going to be attending school, it's got to be in liaison with the school. You're not asking for permission to leave, but you are ask, you are explaining that if you're deciding not to co educate with the school. So part time home, part time school, if you can't get that working, then you would need to withdraw your child from the register. That would be a legal obligation. Otherwise you're going to start getting notices of home education. And then you're explaining what you believe home education is going to look like for your child, not for every other child, for your child. And it can be very specific and put them right at the very center of it. So my child's interests have moved through doing his book work because he was mimicking and copying what he thought was expected before he started to find the exploration in learning. And then we just started documenting that and how you can document that. It doesn't have to be in writing, it can be video recorded, it could be podcasted, it could be, it could be a blog, it could be a myriad of ways that you're actually recording this information. But I think it's important for parents to help their children record that learning journey so that, you know, should there ever be questions asked about what they've done or anything, you've got that there. It doesn't have to be a book though. And people get very, you know, some, there's, there's value, of course but if your child's not connecting there yet, it doesn't mean it won't happen ever, just means it's not at that particular stage. So there's also an awful lot of online resources that can help support the learning. So if it's not your subject matter, that space for me was not a subject matter. I soon became a little bit more conversant because my son was interested in it. So you suddenly end up learning alongside them. And that's really powerful too. When you're learning alongside your child and they've. They're watching you discover and they're watching you light up with a new bit of information, I think that's, they're getting the same kind of responses, being able to be with a peer, learning at that particular point. So my son actually quite enjoys it if I don't know something about a subject, and he's very happy to teach me.

Mark Taylor 00:23:36

And I guess the other thing that people will say is, I'd love that to be the case, but I. Both of the parents maybe are both working or we can't afford to spend the time. And I don't mean it in that way, but, you know, just the realities of life are that. I don't see how that would practically work. What was sort of that experience for you?

Victoria Lenormand 00:23:54

Very real experience. As I. I've spent several years saying to my child, you have to go to school because I have to go to work. And that's really sad for me to have been so stuck on that for quite some period of time. But it is a very real issue. I have a mortgage to pay. We have this, we have that. When you're coming back to your values, you start to understand, well, what can I do? Is probably the place to start is rather than allow the block to come in as a. As a repetition, you have to go to school because I have to go to work. What, what can I do was let me have a look at all of my assets, let me have a look at where, where I do have some maneuverability. Could I be part time? Could I join an education group? You know, home learning group? Is there an ability here to work and educate at the same time? Is there a different type of schooling, Steiner schooling, Montessori schooling? You know, is there a different kind of learning? Is my child so autonomous and of an age where they are actually wanting to take charge of their own learning? It just doesn't tick the curriculum box as yet. You know, maybe a more varied curriculum, maybe they, they're in that particular space, but there's there's so many ways now that it. The challenge I think is for us as the, as the adults in the picture to challenge our thinking process, challenge our beliefs and challenge our values and my family of the highest value that I have. So it's no good me going to work and putting a load of money at the bank and the roof over my head pay for if my child is in a desperate place at that particular point. It's what can shift and that's individual again for each of us. For both of us. We hit around the time of COVID so it gave us three to four months to think about the transition of one adverse had already been furloughed and, and let go. The other was on a zero hours contract because we were in such a crisis point at that point. So zero hours contracts are very risky for families. But can you downsize? Can you. Renting out our home, moving into a motorhome, cost of living went down massively. So it enabled us to do quite a lot on quite a tight budget. So it doesn't have to be all about the money. It can be. It's as individual as we all are. I'm not a financial advisor but we are. It was taking that whole picture of what my husband and I and our children all brought to the table to see what could move and what couldn't. So you have to open your mind at that point to possibility. There are other ways of doing this and I think it's more relevant now than it ever has been that we don't have to leave people in, in distress. There are not necessarily if you're not getting the services support which I understand that they're in crisis points, I really do. But it's coming back to your values to live your life well because when my children are happy it's easy for me.

Mark Taylor 00:27:12

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I think it's such an important thing, isn't it in terms of right we want something to be different and it might be that you've got to crisis and and you think this just can't carry on or you might not be there but you're thinking this really isn't working and rather than it has to do like this because it's like what do we think it could look like and how do we make that work? It's a little bit like I've had conversations with people before saying yes. Even within the school system we all need a set of new IT related things and computers. It's going to cost us a fortune. We can't have that, we don't have the budget. It which is one way of thinking. The other way is how do we find the money that we need in order to do this and set it up so that long term it's not about getting these computers now, it's how do we get them whenever we need them in the future. And then the whole ethos of what you're doing changes. And I think this is the same sort of thing. It's that kind of we don't want life to look like it looks like now. So therefore what can we do to make that difference? And I love the fact that you say it's so personalized because what we're talking about is everything should be personalized more and more the way that we do it. And so is it part time, is it changing this? Is it changing that? I know when our children were young, we decided that one of us, we wanted to make sure that one of us was always at home and we were both self employed so we could make that decision. And you're right, there are implications that come with that. But now with our children having left home, I wouldn't change a day of it. And like I say, you make that choice for a real reason, don't you?

Victoria Lenormand 00:28:38

That's it. It's a very real reason that you make that choice. Absolutely. And like, as we would, it wasn't that we'd suddenly lost our skills or anything overnight. It was just going to look a little differently because the environments we worked in could not be flexible. At the point that we needed some flexibility, they weren't able to be flexible. So it really was okay. We're reimagining what work looks like. And I wrote, I've always wanted to write and I thought, I've never had the time to write because I'm busy and now I have time to write, I can reflect on how we got to where we were. And I published my first book and I never, I never really, this was a dream of mine that I've now managed to realize thanks to my son not, not managing in school, saying, no, actually that's not for me. And why did I start writing? Because he started writing, he was making time to write about the animal that he felt lived inside him. What he's talking about is emotion. He's talking about that big emotion and he identifies big emotions as animal types. And he was talking about the animal living inside him. I said that would make a great book. And he's there using a Dictaphone, writing and I said that's fabulous that the microphone. Sorry, not addiction. He's dictating into the microphone on his computer. He was like, I don't even have to type. And I thought, you're fabulous. You are absolutely fabulous. Do that. Then I'll teach you how to go back and look over your work and punctuate and grow. And we'll just. And it was. Became a natural path rather than a right. We're going to learn about semicolons today and we're going to learn about punctuation today. Instead of separating it in his mind, it was bringing it together with what he was already doing. And it was just a different way of learning. It needed to be more holistic for him to make the connections. And holistic is. Is definitely a word that gets banded around here quite a lot. Yeah, it's a holistic thing. Rugby teaches us way more than just the sport and the rules and the attitude and the well being and the nutrition and the. It's got so much falling out of rugby. Time suddenly made sense because he was looking at space. It made no sense. He had a complete disconnect from the idea of time because it's just a watch on his wrist. Where on earth does that come from? When we understood that going right the way back to the planets and the sun and the rotation and the seasons and. And this is why we. Because the bus is going over there. But it had to be this huge long holistic thing for him to go. Now I understand, I understand my place in that.

Mark Taylor 00:31:18

And the most ridiculous thing is the fact that that's the reason we learned anything. You would think historically, you know, I'm learning this because it needs to serve me. It needs to be relevant to what I'm doing. If I'm learning about growing something in the ground, it's because I need to eat. I need to understand how this works in order for me to survive. You know, like I say, if, if you, if I need to explain something or say that the semicolon ideas, everyone starts to go, oh my word. I don't even remember how that worked. But if it's that kind of. You spend all that time and, and wonder of being able to sort of record something which is really important to you, you then also want to make sure that people understand it. Or if it does have to be printed out or it needs to look a certain way, there's a reason for that because it needs to be a way that people then understand it. So it's got purpose. Ra. It's 10 o' clock on a Monday. And now it's time to do this. Which, like you say, has no benefit or understanding. Exactly. But I just think there's sort of. There's sort of a fundamental human reality to that, whether whatever the subject or, or what it is that you're trying to learn. And I think you can understand why that complete, that complete sort of connection is so supportive for people, no matter sort of whether they have a disability or not or whether. Whether they are in mainstream school or not, because it's got purpose to. To it.

Victoria Lenormand 00:32:35

Oh, I don't think I'm the only adult out there that had several penny drop moments when they left school. I was like, oh, that's why I hadn't made the link. I hadn't made the connection. And for whatever reason, it, you know, we. We throw a lot of mud at the wall, don't we, in a classroom? And some of it sticks and some of it doesn't. Well, obviously some of it didn't quite stick with me and I hadn't understood why that was the way it was and, and why things happened the way they did. And so many penny drop moments and I. I'm watching them happen with my own children, thinking we don't have that holistic connection going on, going through our education system any more than we do through our health system or our system of justice either. There's a lot of. A lot of confusion around that. So I think these are the fundamental points that are missing. And hopefully with this change, and I think we'd all agree we're in a period of quite intense change right now. People really are understanding that there are different ways of doing things and the creatives are really coming into their own to. To bring something different. And I think it's needed. Yeah, I really do think it's needed. This. The idea that my son can find. Find you online and he can listen and he can tune in and he can learn that way. I think that's incredible. There's never been so much information out there as there is now. The trick is not being overwhelmed by it, isn't it?

Mark Taylor 00:34:01

Yeah. And I think that all comes down to that perspective again, doesn't it? Is. It's not about, I need to do it all now. It's the it. Today is another journey. I'm gonna find something. And I might think that's rubbish. I might think this is something I just love and I want to get more and more of it. I mean, I have the same thing. It's like, for me, is it you find an album that's, you know, 20 or 30 years old, you're like, oh, wow, if I'd only known about this before. Or a podcast, you think there's 100 episodes here and I can literally spend however long I like just sort of immersing myself in these people's conversations and thoughts. And you just think, yeah, that's just amazing. And that's it.

Victoria Lenormand 00:34:33

That's living well, isn't it? That's. That is living well is to be able to find those things that you love. And there is so much now out there. I don't think we need to be as scripted as we are.

Mark Taylor 00:34:44

Yeah, for sure. So, so that's, that's a great sort of way into where I was wanting to make sure everyone understood. Say you said your life looked very one dimensional when you sort of traditional jobs, kids go to school, as it were, and now it obviously looks very different. And we've talked about that sort of transition in why. But, but what does the, what does your life look like now from. In terms of like, say there's the schooling, but then there's also the writing the book and then there's, you know, all the other things that you're doing as well. So sort of take us into how that looks and, and, and why it's supportive and how it sort of changed your perception of, of what your life can be and, and how you want it to be, I guess, is probably the most important thing.

Victoria Lenormand 00:35:25

The best thing about it is it slowed down. It slowed down to be able to actually enjoy it, to be at it, to feel like I'm living and not just running a process. I'm not. I've gone from an alarm clock and getting up in the morning and the breakfast and the school run and the running into work and then meeting everybody's deadlines and targets and everything else and then hoping that you're ticking the boxes and doing enough and then coming back home and doing the dinner and hoping it's nutritious and delicious and all of the things, because I'm not a chef, I'm a mum and who cooks and, and yeah, it's gone from that to we gravitate together around the house, through the, through the kitchen, through life. This is my interest right now. This is my interest right now. So how does, how do we meet those? How do we find those? You're really interested in Greek history. Let's. Can we take a trip to Greece out of school, holiday time, where it's so much cheaper as well to to hop on a plane and just go, can you do that? It's. Where can we find the learning? Where can we find the way, the way through? So at the moment, like I say, it's rugby. Rugby's very, very topical at the moment. So we have a rugby coach. My husband has re qualified as a personal trainer. He's teaching children and strength and conditioning and health and, you know, they, they'll have access to people talking about good nutrition, where food, you know, where food meets your body. My son has a little bit of a head start on that because we've, we've detoxed his body from that. I. It's a whole different conversation really, but it's about the sort of gut brain connection when it comes to autism. And there is, there was quite a connection for our child. It's not. Not to say that is the case for every child, but we noticed a gut issue with our child from a very, very young age. And that was what the detective in me wanted to explore. That was the, the writing on the wall that needed looking at. And when we settled his gut and information that we share in our communities and groups through Gemini Directions is that, you know, there is there. If you're noticing issues with the gut, there are places you can start here with nutrition and everything else that may support some of the symptoms that we're commonly seeing with ADHD and autism, if the gut brain is a thing and the one misfiring can cause an issue with the other. So we have a much calmer child after the nutrition change. So he's got a little bit of a head start for the, the rugby and how to stay calm. You know, if he's feeling particularly anxious, he'll find a natural product. He knows foods that will help him do that. So that's really useful. That's where our, our interesting cacao came from, which again, is another sort of conversation. But they're all, they're all side parts to the learning journey that we have all had as a family. And that is what life looks like for us right now, is the whole family are learning together how to live our best lives. And most days we are checking in. Is, is this, is this in? Does this feel good? And do I feel well?

Mark Taylor 00:38:53

Yeah, and. And just talk a little bit about sort of Gemini Directions, because I think that sense of community is something that everybody is really feeling now. Like you say, there's sort of a shift, isn't there? So. So to take us into sort of like, of what you do, how you sort of support People how that sort of part of your life as well. For those people who haven't come across it, sure.

Victoria Lenormand 00:39:15

What my son started it. He started talking about vibration crystals. Vibration fell down the. The rabbit hole of IBM's Marcel Vogel crystal technology. And he kind of merged the metaphysical and the. And the technology at the same time, which I thought was fascinating. But it started us looking at what it is. Whether you're looking at terms like your icky guy, finding your icky guy, whether you're looking at Reiki and energy, these are. These are the things that started to come in. And Gemini Direction started there very much looking at the energy of feeling well and being aligned to live your best life. And then it branched out quite a bit over. Over the years, we've. Since I wrote my book as well, we've had. Had families make contact to say, I'm in this position. And I thought that there would be a useful community space. So that is currently under development. So you won't find it on the website at the moment, but you will soon. If you. If you want to sign up, then you can get information if you want to join in. It's a completely free space for families that are possibly struggling because systems are struggling. So rather than blaming each other, it's a place to come where you can just be held safely to talk about whatever's going on at that particular point to help you get unstuck. Because most people find their own way through getting unstuck. It's through the stuck that we're finding really hard. And getting access to services right now is really, really difficult. So community, I think, is the way that we always have historically supported each other and we need to come back to that. That. So I know that it's been incredibly useful for us to have the charities that have been supporting us throughout this journey. So I'm talking about the autism charities that gave us all the information we needed, including access to resources. If money was tight, whether that was sensory library resources or whether that was books and the people who knew and the parents who had been there. And suddenly your community changes and it's. It's quite a beautiful thing. So we. We wanted to capture that as well. So there are communities for people that look at the metaphysical and there are communities for those that are. The alchemy that you mentioned at the very beginning is the. For us, it's taking the base feeling and finding your gold in that. Where is it? Where. Where are you going? Where are you heading? Where do you find your fire? Yeah. So you're talking about the fire rates. Where'd you find that? Fire?

Mark Taylor 00:41:56

Yeah, exactly. Well, not. I should give you a script because you've managed to do this brilliantly throughout our conversation. Ready to. Ready to the next stage. And of course, by that, I mean, obviously the acronym FIRE is really important to us. And we talk that in terms of feedback, inspiration, resilience and empowerment. What is it that strikes you when you see that? Rather collectively or any words individually?

Victoria Lenormand 00:42:19

Oh, all of it. It's a holistic thing. It's all of it all together. There has to be. The feedback that we're getting at the moment is that our systems are not able to meet the cris point that many of us are at or approaching. It's going to take some inspiration. You're probably feeling it. If you're looking at podcasts like this to do something different. I know teachers that are suddenly setting up schools to do something different. They are inspiring, absolutely inspiring. I know offices that are looking at investigation in a very different way. I know communities that are coming together. This is the inspiration. It is out there. It's happening. You just might need signposting to it. And there are people like me out there ready to help help their community. They're ready to help. Resilience. We've all got. We all need it. It's that learning to have something go wrong and where to find your own tools to come back. How do I come back from this? How do I. How do I grow from this? How do I move on from this? That's the key to resilience, I think, is not how many times can you be hit, it's when you know it's not going right. What tools do you have to put yourself back into alignment with your values? Because everything else will ripple from that. So that's got. And that's the empowerment. The fact that you come back to your values. When you sit there, you feel quite powerful again to say, okay, we've had quite a kicking over this time. This. We could have stayed very much in this box of, your son is failing, he's not doing well, he can't meet these. It doesn't matter what we do, we can. That's massively disempowering to come back to it as a value, as this is a human being finding his own way, that needs some love, care, support, possibly in a different metric than maybe average. I don't even know how to term that, to be honest with you, but I know what was needed and it wasn't there. So it's empowering to take that back for yourself and then watch it. Repetition.

Mark Taylor 00:44:21

Purple. Yeah.

Victoria Lenormand 00:44:22

And that's how you find your community. So your fire is. Yeah, it's, it's a holistic thing.

Mark Taylor 00:44:30

I love that. Thank you for putting it in that way. And the resilience thing, I think, is a really important one for me as you were talking about it, because what strike struck me was the fact that it happens in so many different ways, doesn't it? You know, it can be, I just need the five minutes today. I just need, you know, it doesn't need to be a complete reset. I don't need to have been knocked over in order to then find that resilience to do it. It's lots of different things in lots of different ways. Ways. And one of the things that I do is Alexander technique. And the reason I do it is as a musician, I found that my body was in all sorts of places, my mind was in all sorts of places. And the ability just to reset on a regular basis just meant that it gave me that opportunity then to keep going, to keep doing the next thing. And it's not like I need to do this or the world stops. It's just that I need to do this in order, like I say, to be in the best place to make the next decision or the next thing that I need to do or to, or to take that next sort of thing thought. And I love the fact that it can be something small, but as we know, all those small things end up to be the big things, don't they?

Victoria Lenormand 00:45:31

And that's kind of absolutely my, my small thing is, is like your, it's, it's what's in my cup. I, I, I put cacao in my cup and I sit with my cup and I have my 10 minutes and it sets me for the day and it's become my, my space, my, my place to go to. And even my little boy will walk in. It's like, if you got your cup, I'll come back. Thanks very much.

Mark Taylor 00:45:55

And, and I think just to wrap up, I think the, the title of, you know, the magic of not fitting in. I think the reason I love that so much as a title is the fact that once you sort of release yourself from feeling like it has to look a certain way, then the world looks magical, doesn't it? Everything looks like a possibility. And, you know, from the number of the conversations I've had on this podcast, you know, talking about, you know, online schools where you can just do some things, I've just literally been recording the intro for one about a love based micro school school. Just, just you just kind of think there's so many different things there or within the traditional system, you know, been able to learn to do this or to do that, whatever it happens to be because everyone's different in your circumstances are different. To be able to sort of share those things as we have today is such a real pleasure. So Victoria, thank you so much indeed. I really do appreciate your time and all the wisdom that you've done. And we'll have links to the website and all that stuff on the in the show notes as well so people can click through and find out even more. So yeah, thank you so much indeed.

Victoria Lenormand 00:46:55

No, thank you. Thank you very much for having this space. It's awesome.

Mark Taylor 00:47:00

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.