AllisonDavies ChildAdditionalNeeds

WHAT TO DO
if yo su c yo c i d
ma ha ad on ne
by Allison Davies, RMT, NMT
WWW.ALLISONDAVIES.COM.AU
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
3 A note from Alli
5 Neuro diversity
7 My autism experience
9 Waiting for diagnosis
13 To diagnose or not to diagnose
17 Why I left therapy
19 Understanding brain function
20 Resources
21 More about Allison Davies
22 Terms & Conditions
WWW.ALLISONDAVIES.COM.AU
A NOTE FROM ALLI
If you are reading this it most likely means you suspect your child
requires support beyond what we would consider within the typical
realm of children’s needs.
You might be experiencing screaming, aggression, non verbal

communication, meltdown, shutdown, running away, aversion to
touch, school refusal, sensory overload, high levels of anxiety, sleeping
problems, self harm or a thousand other intense behaviours that
indicate your child needs extra support.
That there is something about them that you need more clarity
around, so that you can support them to thrive and absolutely nail
their best possible life!
Knowing the first step to take when

you are looking for clarity can be so
overwhelming.
I myself had no clue as to how to move forward with this when I
started seeking support for my daughter, and I’m an allied health
therapist!

So before you seek that referral, book in to a psych, start exploring
assessments read this book. I’ve put together the information that I
believe would have made my own journey into seeking support,
assessment and diagnosis easier, had I have known these things.
WWW.ALLISONDAVIES.COM.AU 3
And whether you wrap up this journey with a diagnosis, multiple
diagnoses, a support plan to help your child thrive, or simply the
knowledge that what they are experiencing is a typical part of their
development and you are already doing all the things – you will be
richer for the deeper understanding that this book will bring.

And remember, parents, you are never alone. Even when you feel you
are.

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED THAT NO ONE'S

Parents and carers all around the world are currently seeking this very
information to fully understand their own child, who is experiencing
REALLY LOOKING FOR INFO ABOUT THEIR
the very same struggles that your child is.

CHILDREN'S BRAIN DEVELOPMENT?
You are never alone.
ONE TERM I REALLY NEED TO INTRODUCE TO YOU
IS NEURO DIVERSITY.
The concept of neuro diversity is a relatively new one.
This is something you may not have heard before and it is absolutely
giving perspective and context to the fact that Autism, ADHD,
Tourette's Syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Sensory
Processing Disorder, all of these and more - are just a part of the big
reality that we are all diverse. And diversity is normal.

We are all individual. We are all unique.
There is nothing wrong with anyone

whose brain is neuro diverse.
It is not a problem that needs to be fixed. It is not an illness. It is not

something that needs to be changed, or stopped, or shamed. It’s
actually something that should be celebrated, it’s a strength, and it’s
not just an ‘element’ of someone’s personality, it’s innately who they
are.
BEING NEURO DIVERSE IS A WONDERFUL THING
And you will find when you start thinking of your child as part of a
neuro diverse culture, you will notice people in your lives, people in
your school environment, people in your workplace who are completely
alongside you, celebrating your child for who they are and what they
can be in the world.
If you look for discrimination you will find it. If you look for celebration,
strength, acceptance and understanding amongst people in your lives
you will also find it.

I ask you to consider the concept of neuro diversity.

Understand that we are all different and all unique. And understanding
or identifying your child’s specific neuro diverse needs - whether you
value the idea of a diagnosis, or you don’t - is absolutely invaluable to
understanding your child's specific individual needs, have clarity
around them, and be able to support your child to love themselves and
thrive in a world that can be quite difficult to thrive in.
I myself am autistic.

And for me personally, the neuro diversity movement has absolutely
allowed me to recognise that who I am - which includes the things that
I'm good at, the things I struggle with, the things that I find easy, the
things that I find difficult – is normal.
It has allowed me to accept that I am

absolutely valid and don’t ever need to
change.
I used to think of Autism as a condition, something that needed to be
managed by setting goals, often behavioural and social-based goals, to
help me fit into a typical society.
I no longer feel the pressure of that.
I absolutely believe that if you acknowledge your child's individuality

as a person for who they are, no matter how complex or relatively
simple their needs might seem, they have the capacity to have a
fulfilling life. They have the capacity to feel good about themselves, to
contribute to their community, to their family and to society. To be a
hugely valuable part of a classroom, and to have a life that brings them
joy and is a life by design.
I truly believe that all children have the capacity for this, whether they
are verbal or not, whether they are independent or not or whether
their needs are considered by their culture to be functional or non
functional.
THINK OF NEURO DIVERSITY LIKE ICE CREAM
Everybody likes an ice cream. We want them in our life, they’re

delicious. And no matter what flavour it is, every ice cream flavour has
its place in the world and is equally as valid as the other.
Can you imagine how boring the world would be if we only ever had
the option of vanilla?
Having a diversity of flavours brings

us joy and makes life wonderful.
Ice creams are all made of the same basic ingredients and components -
no matter what flavour they are.
Our brains are absolutely no different. They all stick to the basic game
plan. They have the same basic functions. They ‘basically’ do all the
same things, but they have their own flavour.
And I don't know about you, but I would never, ever choose an ice
cream bar with one flavour at it, over an ice cream bar with all the
possible flavours you could ever imagine.
That, to me, is how I want my family, school, society and culture to

look. Diversity rich and full of flavour.
IF YOU SUSPECT THAT YOUR CHILD IS NEURODIVERSE

AND YOU ARE SEEKING ASSESSMENT, IDENTIFICATION
OR DIAGNOSIS, THE FIRST THING YOU NEED TO DO IS BE
PREPARED FOR THIS TO TAKE TIME.
Patience is paramount.
From the day I made my first appointment with a GP for my

daughter’s referral it was close to two years before we had an autism
diagnosis.
This meant months in between appointments, months on waiting lists

and us really not knowing what to do while we waited.
This, in most cases, is inevitable.
I felt so frustrated by the excruciatingly long waiting lists we found

ourselves on, and these are absolutely the norm for anyone living in a
regional or remote area.
But what I didn't realise at the time is that the waiting would not
change anything important.
It would not change who my daughter is. It would not change how we
love her and the fact that we were supporting her the best we could
anyway. She was autistic from the moment she was born and she will
be autistic for the rest of her life.
The two years of us waiting for someone else to clarify that did not
change who she was or who we are and how we supported her.
As frustrating as this long wait is

going to be, try and remind yourself
that this is a season.
You will gain clarity one way or the other.You will get answers. You
will be offered support.
In the meantime, while you wait, your child is getting everything they
can from you right now, and that is enough.
By all means, rant with your friends who are also on waiting lists!
Because it's frustrating, and it can feel super validating to complain
about the system with others who are experiencing the same thing.
But always keep in mind that this will not change who your child is, or
how you support them.
In the long run, the waiting list stage is a very short period of your life.
TO DIAGNOSE OR NOT TO DIAGNOSE
You may be on waiting lists or in between appointments with

paediatricians, occupational therapists, speech and language
pathologists, and music therapists.
You may be seeking therapy, or professional opinion, but you still may
not be decided whether you want to access an official assessment and a
diagnosis for your child, and this is one of the dilemmas that people ask
me about more than any other.
This is a very personal choice, there's

no right or wrong.
But I’d like to offer my personal experience as an autistic person who
wasn't diagnosed until I was 36.
I lived what looked like a relatively typical life, I worked out ways of
managing my childhood, and I did this in ways in which no one would
have ever suspected that I was autistic.
But with a life of self management that no one else knows about, social
masking and trying to fit in, came a lot of confusion, a lot of feeling
that I was different.
By pretending to understand what other people around me were doing,

especially at school, I felt that I was being a fake.
That led to self talk such as “If only they knew what you were really
like”, “How can you be so smart but so dumb?”, “You are a fake."
Those words have stayed with me

throughout most of my life.
It is a commonplace discussion amongst autistic adults that it is very,
very common to develop mentally imbalanced thoughts around our
sense of self as a result of not having understood our neuro diversity.
This may not be the case with your child as they grow older,
especially with so much more awareness, discussion and
conversation around neuro diversity from such a young age in this
generation.
However it does give you something to consider when you are going
through the pros and cons of deciding whether to seek a diagnosis.
Secondly, it is totally acceptable to be neuro diverse these days!
We worry a lot about discrimination as parents, because when we

grew up in the 70s, 80s, 90s, discrimination around people who were
different was far more evident.
It was commonplace, and we remember that. So the thought of
discrimination, and potentially our child being thought of as different
or teased by their peers, is automatically living within us as a fear.
When we cast ourselves back to our own childhood, that was a reality.
The beautiful thing is that for our

children, being neuro diverse is not so
much of a big deal anymore.
There are multiple, complex needs in every classroom at every school

around the world. These days we openly talk about them, parents
communicate with teachers, teachers seek professional development.
I do believe, and hope, that our children are going to be the first
generation of people to go through school with multiple neuro diverse
children in their classroom, with everybody knowing about it and
nobody thinking any differently of anyone as a result of it.
And finally, the word diagnosis in itself can feel pathological.
It can feel like an illness, or a disease, or a condition.
‘Diagnosis’ conjures up images of things that need to be treated and

fixed, and this is misleading.
If you can move away from the thought of diagnosing your child, and
move towards the idea of identifying their needs, you will see the
value in identification.
Diagnosis is just a word. You can

choose to call it what you like.
I call it identification, and from the moment I identified who I was, I
identified my needs, so that I could thrive and live my best life.
Likewise the moment we were able to identify our daughter's needs,

and help her thrive and manage herself in the world, our lives became
so much easier, and brought so much clarity as to how we could
support our daughter to live her best life.
WANT TO KNOW WHY I LEFT THERAPY?
I recently closed my private practice, where I had worked for more

than a decade as a music therapist with children, because I recognised
an alarming pattern.
Parents were becoming disempowered in their role as the change

maker in their family, and were leaning towards reliance on their
child's therapists to be this person.
It was by no fault of their own, because I also recognised that it was no

one’s role to educate and support the parents in this endeavour.
Many of these parents were absolutely able to make changes in their

lifestyle, in their own minds, and in their homes in a way that would
support their child's needs.
But nobody had taught them how, showed them how or encouraged
them to do it.
No one was teaching parents about neuro diversity, what it means,

how their child’s brain functions, how to support it to function at it’s
best or giving them strategies to make this happen as part of their
ongoing lifestyle.
So, parents were taking their children to multiple therapy sessions a

week, and hoping for the best.
There is absolutely a place for these
therapy sessions.
They can be extremely important and extremely beneficial, but if the

sum total value is one session once a week with no education, support
or conversation with the parents or caregiver around how to maintain
these changes at home, it's not sustainable and it's not the best way to
go.
I realised that I needed to stop working

with the children and start working
with the parents, educating them about
how they could be the change maker.
PARENTS, YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND HOW YOUR
CHILD’S BRAIN WORKS
When they have a meltdown, what is actually happening? When they

shutdown, stop listening, scream, force you to go away, don't engage…
What is happening in their brain for that to happen?
Every single behaviour is always a by product of what's going on in the
REALLY
brain. LOOKING FOR INFO ABOUT THEIR
The behaviour
CHILDREN'S is never the problem.
BRAIN DEVELOPMENT?
The meltdowns, the shutdown, the screaming, kicking, biting, running
away, self harming - it's never the problem.
The problem is that whatever is going on inside the brain is resulting

in these risky and detrimental behaviours.
When you understand the brain, how it functions, and how to support
it to function at it’s best, so many of the behaviours that we think of as
problematic tend to sort themselves out and disappear.
Click here to join the waiting list for

Often your child will experience less meltdowns when you are able to
the 10 week ecourse

support their brain to function at its best.
Often your child will stop running away when you can support their
brain in what it needs to function at its best.
Until you understand the basic
functioning of their brain, you are
unable to know how to support it.
I run a 10-week eCourse called Brains = Behaviors, and across the ten
weeks I teach you about emotional regulation, executive functioning,
hyperactivity, and anxiety, as well as sensory processing and
meltdown management.
I teach you about self-expression, and how important it is for a brain

that is functioning at its best to be able to express healthily.
Click here to join the waiting list for

the 10 week ecourse
BRAINS = BEHAVIOURS
I have a number of digital resources on
my website to give you further insight
into your child’s brain.
Click the images below to learn more about each course.
The Meltdown
Series
Sensory
Overload
What is
Anxiety
Allison Davies
Neurologic Music Therapist & Brain Care Specialist

Allison Davies is a brain care specialist, Neurologic Music Therapist,
educator, advocate, speaker, mum and wife. She is also creator of the
online course Brains = Behaviours.
Allison has enjoyed presenting and guest speaking for more than 15
years and is renowned for her ability to entertain a room in her unique
‘storytelling mixed with science’ approach to educating, as well as
sharing enlightening excerpts of her lived experience of Autism
Spectrum Disorder and Sensory Processing Disorder.
She was named a 2016 National AMP Tomorrow Maker for her
contribution to creating a better tomorrow for Australian families, and
in 2018 Allison received third place in both the ‘Women Will Change the
World’ and ‘Making a Difference’ National AusMumpreneur Awards .
Allison lives in regional Tasmania, with her husband and 2 children,

where she enjoys the beach, the bush and baths.
Terms & Conditions
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WHAT TO DO

You might be experiencing screaming, aggression, non verbal

Knowing the first step to take when

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED THAT NO ONE'S

The concept of neuro diversity is a relatively new one.

There is nothing wrong with anyone

It is not a problem that needs to be fixed. It is not an illness. It is not

It has allowed me to accept that I am

I no longer feel the pressure of that.

I absolutely believe that if you acknowledge your child's individuality

Everybody likes an ice cream. We want them in our life, they’re

Having a diversity of flavours brings

That, to me, is how I want my family, school, society and culture to

IF YOU SUSPECT THAT YOUR CHILD IS NEURODIVERSE

From the day I made my first appointment with a GP for my

This meant months in between appointments, months on waiting lists

This, in most cases, is inevitable.

I felt so frustrated by the excruciatingly long waiting lists we found

As frustrating as this long wait is

You may be on waiting lists or in between appointments with

This is a very personal choice, there's

By pretending to understand what other people around me were doing,

Those words have stayed with me

Secondly, it is totally acceptable to be neuro diverse these days!

We worry a lot about discrimination as parents, because when we

The beautiful thing is that for our

There are multiple, complex needs in every classroom at every school

It can feel like an illness, or a disease, or a condition.

‘Diagnosis’ conjures up images of things that need to be treated and

Diagnosis is just a word. You can

Likewise the moment we were able to identify our daughter's needs,

I recently closed my private practice, where I had worked for more

Parents were becoming disempowered in their role as the change

It was by no fault of their own, because I also recognised that it was no

Many of these parents were absolutely able to make changes in their

No one was teaching parents about neuro diversity, what it means,

So, parents were taking their children to multiple therapy sessions a

They can be extremely important and extremely beneficial, but if the

I realised that I needed to stop working

When they have a meltdown, what is actually happening? When they

The problem is that whatever is going on inside the brain is resulting

Click here to join the waiting list for

the 10 week ecourse

I teach you about self-expression, and how important it is for a brain

Click here to join the waiting list for

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED THAT NO ONE'S

Allison lives in regional Tasmania, with her husband and 2 children,

REALLY LOOKING FOR INFO ABOUT THEIR

CHILDREN'S BRAIN DEVELOPMENT?

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