TPP 352: Occupational Therapist Kelly Mahler on the Power in Understanding & Supporting Neurodivergent Kids' Interoception Experience
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
36 min
2 speakers
4 chapters
transcribed 14 hours ago
Transcript
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Blaine. Compliance approaches condition us to ignore our body's needs in order to please other people. Day in and day out, all of us are subjected to these compliance approaches, but neurodivergent kids are some of the highest people that will be exposed to compliance approaches on a daily basis. And like, oh, sit still and get your token, even though their body's saying, I need to move in order to do well in school, you know, conditioning day in and day out to ignore the body to please other people.
I'm Debbie Rieber and welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. Does your child ever seem disconnected to their body? Maybe they would completely forget to eat if you didn't remind them because they never experience hunger. Or they can play outdoors for hours in freezing weather, but because they're not really no Noticing how cold it is, they leave the hat, the gloves, and the coat at home. Or on the flip side, maybe your child is intensely connected to their body. Maybe they experience such strong internal or external body sensations that it's hard for them to pay attention to anything else, or it spikes their anxiety or triggers them into fight or flight mode.
These are just a few examples of extremes and variances in interoception awareness, which is essentially the language of our bodies. And for most neurodivergent kids, interoception is a factor in their ability to hear or feel, pay attention, and ultimately respond to the messages their bodies are sending them at any given time. I wanted to explore this concept of interoception and differently wired kids more deeply for the show. So I reached out to Kelly Mahler, an occupational therapist who specializes in interoception and is a co-principal investigator in several research projects pertaining to topics such as interoception, self-regulation, trauma, and autism. Kelly answered my big questions about interoception, including how
How it relates to sensory processing differences or SPD, why it's essential that we help our children get to know their body's unique language, and the relationship between ADHD, autism, and interoception. We also talked about what happens in our kids' brains when they increase their interoceptive awareness and effective strategies for helping our kids develop in this area. Kelly comes to this conversation with a ton of experience. She's been an occupational therapist for 20 years, serving school-aged children and adults, and she's the winner of multiple awards, including the 2020 American Occupational Therapy Association Emerging and Innovative Practice Award and a Mom's Choice Gold Medal. This is a fascinating discussion about a topic that is new to this show.
I'm so excited to share it with you. So here is my conversation with Kelly Mahler. Hey Kelly, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Debbie. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited to get into this. I always get very excited when I'm bringing a brand new topic to the show. I'm kind of embarrassed that we haven't discussed interoception as a full theme yet, but it's time and you're the perfect person to talk with about interoception. Before we get into it, I always ask guests to give me A little bit of their story or who they are in the world and connect that to your personal why. Why is this the work that you do and that you care about so much?
Yeah, that's a good question, a very big question. But I am an occupational therapist by trade. I've been practicing for twenty one years. Professionally, I've always been really interested in supporting mental health, sensory processing, and emotion regulation.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:51
2
What is interoception and why does it matter for neurodivergent children?
5:51–10:42
3
How did Kelly Mahler become interested in interoception and what is her background?
10:42–34:40
4
How does interoception relate to sensory processing differences and SPD?
34:40–36:33
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
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TPP 522: A Whole Child Approach to ADHD with Phil Boucher, M.D.
TPP 091a: A Conversation With Steve Silberman About His Book “Neurotribes”
TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids