Embracing Stripes: Dyscalculia and Neurodiverse Parenting with Joshua Rastetter
Mike and Chaya chat with Joshua Rastetter, who shares an insightful perspective on navigating neurodiversity mindfully, along with valuable advice for parents navigating the spectrum alongside their children. Josh opens up about his journey with Dyscalculia and how discovering his ADHD through his daughter’s diagnosis led to a profound shift in their relationship and his life.
We Also Cover:
- Feeling "Lazy" With ADHD
- The Importance of Individualized Coping Skills
- Dyscalculia Is Weird
- Undiagnosed ADHD Leading To Issues With Parents
- Managing Hyperfocus
- The Different Definitions of Meditation
- Individualized Coping Skills
Quotes:
- "It's about removing the baseline mirage of 'normal.'”
- "It was a real paradigm shift both for me and for my daughter because these these tricks and accommodations that I had been making for myself for years went from being something innate that I wasn't doing on purpose to something very purposeful and very intentional."
- "When you are a zebra in a herd of horses, that is where it becomes a disorder: when you're trying to be something other than a zebra."
- "I found myself in the same shoes as my parents where I had this internal narrative where I was saying it was laziness or it was defiance and that that I had to get her to listen. And it was frustrating for me and it was frustrating for her."
About Josh:
Joshua Rastetter is based in Texas with over 10 years of experience in SaaS applications and B2B enterprise software. Specializing in ProductOps, focusing on user-centric design, accessibility, and inclusivity. He has established product-market fit across various industries and led a diverse team of over 50 professionals across three continents. Known for quickly gaining credibility with stakeholders, Joshua brings a unique perspective as a neurodivergent father, product manager, and data nerd.
Connect With Josh:
As always, thanks for lending us your ears and keep igniting that spark!
Stay Connected:
- Website: https://sparklaunchpodcast.com/
- ADHD Coaching & Workshops: https://www.sparklaunch.org/
- Chaya on Instagram
- Mike on Instagram
- Want To Be a Guest? https://sparklaunchpodcast.com/booking
Transcript
You've landed at Spark Launch, the guide star for embracing what it means to be neurodiverse.
Speaker:I'm Mike Cornell, joined by CEO of Spark Launch, Chaya Mallavaram.
Speaker:Here, we navigate mental health triumphs and tribulations from all across the spectrum, charting a course of the shared experiences that unite us, and discovering how to embody the unique strengths within neurodivergent and neurotypical alike, igniting your spark and launching it into a better tomorrow.
Speaker:Hello, everyone.
Speaker:I'm Mike.
Speaker:I'm Chaya.
Speaker:And today, we wanna welcome to the show Josh Rastetter, a neurodivergent father, product manager, and self proclaimed data wizard who's here to share his unique perspective on navigating the challenges and celebrating the strengths of neurodiversity.
Speaker:Welcome.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Fantastic to be here.
Speaker:Welcome to the show.
Speaker:Thank you for being part of it.
Speaker:Tell us about you, your childhood.
Speaker:How was it growing up not knowing you were neurodivergent, but living as a neurodivergent person?
Speaker:How was life?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So my my school career, especially through the end of high school, was a struggle, you know, to say the least.
Speaker:I did okay, and I think I did okay because, you know, I'm I have a very high IQ.
Speaker:You know, I have a lot of processing power and, you know, I was able to kind of just clutch my way through it.
Speaker:But, yeah, it was it was a struggle, Finding motivation and, you know, doing things that I didn't care about, you know, just to get by.
Speaker:It was a a cause of a lot of conflict between me and my parents because, you know, the the constant narrative there was, we know you're so smart.
Speaker:We know you can do better.
Speaker:Why do you why are you doing just enough to get by?
Speaker:You know, and that was the the constant, you know, push and pull was they wanted me to do more and, you know, thought I was capable of more, that I was just lazy.
Speaker:You know, that that was kind of this and and a lot of that was internalized.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:A lot of that I I internalized on myself because I thought I was just lazy, you know, and, you know, couldn't ever figure out why I couldn't, you know, get my my act together and and really apply myself because I also knew that I was I was smart.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It wouldn't it wouldn't until, you know, later in my my college career and on into my professional career that a lot of that really clicked and started getting better, you know, where where I could really apply myself as long as it was something that I was I was interested in.
Speaker:You brought about a very important point that that your parents thought you were lazy, and you believed that you were lazy.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And and this happens a lot, right, with children, especially children because they soak in, soak in all that information that's given to them, that's been fed to them, the good, the bad.
Speaker:They can't tell the difference.
Speaker:And and even you mentioned IQ, I'll bet you didn't know that at that time, kind of you didn't know that the IQ, you were good enough.
Speaker:Those things were never really highlighted, I I'm guessing, because that's the same with me.
Speaker:So it was still, like, it's an in inner knowledge.
Speaker:It's you just have that belief you are good, but but the the world is constantly telling you you're not good.
Speaker:To the parents, to the education, the grades, at least for me.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:I think I'm I'm just talking about me, but that's how I felt.
Speaker:I I wonder what your how you felt about that, about someone calling you lazy and feeling lazy and believing you were lazy, but not really.
Speaker:You have this high IQ.
Speaker:How was that internal conflict within yourself?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I I knew I was smart because there was subjects in school.
Speaker:Like, in school, I either got a's or c's, and there was nothing in between.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:So if it was a subject that I was interested in, then I got an A and I got it effortlessly.
Speaker:If it wasn't something that I wasn't interested in, I got a C and that's only because I pushed myself enough to get a C so that I could pass the class so I wouldn't have to take it again, You know?
Speaker:So it was yeah.
Speaker:So, like, overall, my average was average, but I knew that I was that I was smart, you know, that I had the ability.
Speaker:It was more of a lack of motivation and no external factors could make me care about something that I didn't care about.
Speaker:And that's, I think, where a lot of the internalized laziness, you know, like, came from.
Speaker:How would you say, like, with that internalization, do you feel that there were certain things you kind of did or uses maybe, like, coping mechanisms or whatnot that or were ways of, like, that internalization to escape?
Speaker:You know, I'm, you know, trying to trying to put myself back in that that frame of mind.
Speaker:And, honestly, when I was in school, I just didn't care about school.
Speaker:School was a roadblock to doing the things that I liked doing, and I got in trouble if I didn't pass.
Speaker:So I I did what I had to so that it didn't become a roadblock to the things that I wanted to do.
Speaker:It was the what was it like?
Speaker:I guess it would've been been, like, numerous things, but was it like the structure of the way the education was presented, not only just like the disinterest?
Speaker:There there was a lot of that structural stuff too, especially in math.
Speaker:The the the structure of how math was presented made it very difficult for me.
Speaker:But what was weird and and how I, you know, looking back, I eventually realized that it wasn't an issue with math conceptually is that I was really good in chemistry.
Speaker:And chemistry is just math applied practically.
Speaker:It's it's algebra, you know, but it's it's algebra applied where you can see the result.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:It's it's a practical application of algebra.
Speaker:And and chemistry, because it was interesting to me and because it was more concrete, it it clicked, it snapped, and it was easy.
Speaker:You know, I didn't have to put a lot of of effort into it.
Speaker:And that actually caused arguments between me and my my parents because they were like chemistry is just math.
Speaker:You're you're you have algebra in the same year as chemistry and you're doing poorly in algebra, but you're doing good in chemistry.
Speaker:And, like, they could not square that that round peg.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:They could not figure out why one math was hard and the other was easy.
Speaker:So what did your what did that do to your feelings towards math?
Speaker:How did you feel math was, and did you come to any conclusions there?
Speaker:Well, I hated math.
Speaker:Hated it.
Speaker:Hated, hated, hated it until, like, 2 or 3 years into college.
Speaker:I had to take a math class, had to, couldn't avoid it.
Speaker:And the class that I took was like college algebra, but it was like because I was in art school at the time.
Speaker:It was, you know, college algebra for artists, basically.
Speaker:And, you know, it it just was presented in a different way.
Speaker:And my professor was incredible.
Speaker:And what he actually figured out for me during that time was that I had dyscalculia because I would do the work, I would show my work and it would be wrong, but that's because during the process and how I was mechanically supposed to be showing my work, I would transpose numbers.
Speaker:And so if you followed my work, I was giving the correct answer, but it wasn't the correct answer for the question asked.
Speaker:And, you know, he saw enough of my work, enough of my and paid attention and cared.
Speaker:You know, that was another big part of it, that he was able to identify that and and help me accommodate that.
Speaker:And after that, I I did fine.
Speaker:Still wasn't a big fan of math at that point, but I did fine.
Speaker:And, you know, ended up, I think, with an a in that class.
Speaker:But it was simple as simple enough as instead of asking me to show my work with numbers, that he just asked me to write out what my thought process was and let me do it on
Speaker:I have dyscalculia as as well.
Speaker:So everything, like yeah.
Speaker:That's that's me with with numbers, and I get I get numbers backwards a lot.
Speaker:There are certain numbers that are connected in my mind.
Speaker:I don't really understand why, whereas, like, the number I think it yeah.
Speaker:It's 13 and 27 swap.
Speaker:Sometimes when I'm reading numbers or trying to remember numbers or anything that involves those like, if they're in the combination somewhere, they'll inevitably 13 will become 27.
Speaker:And I don't know why that happens, but it happens.
Speaker:That's wild.
Speaker:For me, it's it's fives and nines.
Speaker:Fives will become nines, and nines will become fives.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:If if I'm trying to to remember a number, you know, a number that has fives and nines in it, especially if it has both, the the fives will inevitably be where the nines were supposed to be and the nines will inevitably be where the fives are supposed be.
Speaker:Even if I know that that's what is happening, I it still happens.
Speaker:It's so wild.
Speaker:Like, it's so hard to describe it to people because it doesn't make sense, like, to us either, like, why certain things happen.
Speaker:Like, I always go back to this weird I think it was it was 3rd grade where I I mean, math was impossible for me.
Speaker:And multiplication specifically was, like, really hard at the time.
Speaker:But this was they started to teach us division.
Speaker:And I for whatever that 1 year, I was a whiz at division.
Speaker:I could just walk up to the blackboard and do every problem there, like, immediately.
Speaker:Could not multiply to save my life.
Speaker:And teachers were so confused.
Speaker:So I could do one and not the other because it's just it's just the same thing but reversed.
Speaker:So I don't like, why can't you get that?
Speaker:Like, I don't know.
Speaker:Just you the numbers are now moved in a different direction, so now my brain can understand them better.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's it's crazy like that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The way I do mental math is, like, I've I've I've explained it out to people a few times, and, like, it's it's so weird, but it works for me.
Speaker:Like, it's a lot of extra steps and, you know, it it would be easier to just do it the same way that you would write it out.
Speaker:But I have to I don't know.
Speaker:It's just a system that I have come up with over the course of my life that is the only way I've ever been able to do mental math and not have it get mixed up or sideways.
Speaker:And it it involves basically squaring out numbers.
Speaker:So, you know, going up to the next 10 or, you know, the next nearest 5 because fives and tens seem to be okay for me and then putting numbers together as I need to and then subtracting the adjustments that I made at the end.
Speaker:So even saying it out loud is kind of hard to explain, but say that I was adding 1312, I would make 12 into 10 and 13 into 10, put the 20 together, and then add the the 2 and the 3 together to get 5, so 25.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:It's it's extra steps.
Speaker:Failure to me.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Extra steps.
Speaker:It's, you know, when I explained that to a lot of neurotypical people, they that is wildly weird way to do it, but that's the only way I can.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:It's akin to you can't solve a jigsaw puzzle, so you take a hammer and break all the pieces into smaller pieces, and then you can solve the jigsaw puzzle.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Basically, that's a great explanation.
Speaker:And and you can put it in a way that you want to.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:When you give that freedom and say, I'm gonna put that put back that jigsaw puzzle, like, the way my brain works.
Speaker:When you give that when you're given that freedom, it suddenly works.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So for me, it's it's just on the education.
Speaker:It's just the nonlinear thinking.
Speaker:I can tell you how important that is when I get the freedom to go explore what I want to do.
Speaker:Maybe I want to study the last chapter first.
Speaker:Maybe I wanna see I usually like to get that end result to see where I'm headed, and and then then maybe just jump to chapter 5 and then chapter 1 and just chase my curiosity.
Speaker:It's it's that that'll help me get that full picture.
Speaker:So even now with Spark launch, I I I give myself freedom to explore and and build the way I want to.
Speaker:Of course, when I present it, it's gonna be in a way that can be understood by people, but the way I learn is is so, different.
Speaker:And I I love that freedom that I've given to myself.
Speaker:So, Josh, you you mentioned the conflict with the parents.
Speaker:So was it with education, or is was it more than that?
Speaker:Because I had plenty of conflicts with my mother, actually, because she had a lot of rules, and I I like to question every single rule.
Speaker:And so what was your experience with that?
Speaker:Well, you know, on the whole, I have have and had a a pretty good relationship with my parents.
Speaker:So it's it's not that, you know, we were constantly fighting or or, you know, really had a poor relationship or anything like that.
Speaker:They're great and, you know, I love them dearly.
Speaker:But they really just there were certain things, especially in academics, that they just really couldn't understand that led to, you know, conflict.
Speaker:Nothing nothing horrible, but, you know, definitely there was misunderstanding of, you know, what was what was going on and, you know, they were worried that I would have a hard time finding professional success if I couldn't do well in school.
Speaker:So in their mind, those two things were linked and they thought if I was being lazy at school that the same thing would happen in in my professional life.
Speaker:And to a degree, they're not entirely wrong.
Speaker:You know, I had many jobs where it was just a job and I was doing it to get a paycheck and and wasn't super interested in it.
Speaker:And, you know, I would stay there for 6 months to a year and then churn out.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:But, you know, that comes from having a job to get a paycheck and not a career that I'm actually interested in.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But I I think I think we all agree that we need a deep understanding of the why to follow something.
Speaker:So when somebody says just study, just do get good grades, it it doesn't fully resonate at all.
Speaker:Actually, it doesn't resonate at all.
Speaker:And so when any any kind of a rule was given to me, and still is, I wanna know the whole thing as to why.
Speaker:I I wanna know every part of it.
Speaker:And and so it's really important that we present it that way as parents too.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And having a neurodivergent child, I know I can get through a lot of things that I wanna communicate to my child by presenting first of all, by understanding who my son is and presenting it in a way that they fully understand because that's exactly how I am.
Speaker:And so yeah.
Speaker:So I had wonderful relationship with my parents too, but there was a lot of conflict.
Speaker:And when only when it came to rules because I don't understand them.
Speaker:You know, this is not this is gonna sound bad, but there there was a certain point, especially, like, once I was a teenager, where they kinda gave up trying to make rules.
Speaker:I think they learned about the time that I was 13 or 14 that punishments had no effect on me whatsoever and were not a way to modify my behavior in any way, shape or form.
Speaker:And it's not that they just let me do whatever I wanted to, but, you know, the the rules became suggestions and guidelines and punishments became a formality.
Speaker:You know, they they they knew that they weren't effective.
Speaker:I knew that they weren't effective.
Speaker:So, you know, they would say you're grounded, then I'd be like, okay, I'll see you tomorrow, you know, and leave.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:So that was kind of, you know, especially my my later teenage years, it was it was kind of this cold war of sorts where they kind of knew that they didn't have a whole lot of power in their rules and punishments if I didn't care about them.
Speaker:And and so we just rather than causing each other a lot of stress, we we kind of fell into a pattern of of doing our best to respect boundaries on on both sides.
Speaker:I had similar experience.
Speaker:The rules started becoming easier, and they kind of just tapered away as I got older.
Speaker:Definitely high school, my mother stopped monitoring my education.
Speaker:And then in college, my social life, and and, of course, there was full freedom because I'm married.
Speaker:I wanted to, especially with the arranged marriage situation in India.
Speaker:I did everything that I wanted to.
Speaker:But it's amazing when you honor yourself because, ultimately, you're the one living your life.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So it's really important to bring back that focus to us and and figure out what works for us.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And when you're given that given that freedom and responsibility, you actually turn out to be okay, and that's how I feel.
Speaker:That's why freedom is really important.
Speaker:And self governance, teaching individuals how to go towards the right direction and why it's important to do things that are that are going to have a positive impact, is is critical.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:For sure.
Speaker:And, you know, there was there was a lot of things that, you know, my parents taught me just by example.
Speaker:You know, they didn't have to say it out loud, but just by example.
Speaker:They they taught me, kind of my sense of morality and my boundaries and my lines that I wouldn't cross.
Speaker:And those were innate, like I didn't have to self regulate to make those things happen, they just were.
Speaker:And when they kind of came to the realization that I was going to do what I was going to do and there wasn't much that they like fighting it was just going to make us both stressed out.
Speaker:So they would ask questions, you know, they wouldn't let me just go and, you know, often do whatever I wanted at any time, but they would ask questions and and make sure that I was in the right mindset and was going to not make the worst decisions if if not good ones, you know?
Speaker:And then they were like, okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Call me if you if you need anything or if you get in trouble, don't do anything too stupid that you can't come back.
Speaker:That's that's kind of how my teenage years played out.
Speaker:And then, you know, college was an entirely different story because it was something that I wanted to do and and they they didn't push me to do.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The drive's always there for us when it comes to any number of things that we feel passionate about.
Speaker:And, I mean, that's true of neurotypicals and neurodivergence, but especially neurodivergence who just don't who you know, there's the Bruce Lee quote about becoming water.
Speaker:We don't really become water.
Speaker:We kinda we're stuck in our ice form, essentially, So we have to go with with what we what we are.
Speaker:Shifting gears a little bit with with these kind of, like, issues with numbers and but you're, you know, the the way you're able to adapt them to more of your interests of, you know, like chemistry and whatnot.
Speaker:When it comes to coding and, like, your career in that, how has that kind of, like, aided you or you've had to adjust it to suit your needs?
Speaker:That's a great question.
Speaker:So coding is strange because it's parts of it come very naturally to me and it hasn't had to be a lot of adaptation because it's already applied maths.
Speaker:But other parts of it, the the really abstract stuff is harder.
Speaker:So and my accommodation for that has been with a lot of comments and notes.
Speaker:You know, I basically have to I have to put a lot of comments in my code to tell me what it's doing, right?
Speaker:Especially if it's function or something that I've borrowed or taken from somewhere else.
Speaker:I really have to break it down and understand it and then put comments in there because if I understand it today, there's no guarantee that I'm gonna understand it tomorrow.
Speaker:So there there's a lot of that where where I have to go in and and put in a lot of comments and notes to my to myself from myself because I've learned that, you know, I I can't rely on a eureka moment being there next time I come and look at that code 6 months from now.
Speaker:So and that's mostly with borrowed code, the code that that I I got from the Internet or, that somebody else wrote or, you know, a library.
Speaker:That that's where I have to do a lot of notes.
Speaker:Notes to self and clarifying stuff.
Speaker:And and sometimes I have to break it down like line by line and and break it, you know, make it not work so that I can make it work again to really understand it.
Speaker:You took me back to my 20 year 22 years of coding, which I just loved.
Speaker:I love, love, loved writing code and and the comments.
Speaker:What a good practice that is not just for ourselves, but for others as well.
Speaker:And you want to capture that eureka moment.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And and it's just beautiful how that eureka moment comes when you're in the flow, when you're just going with that flow and something happens.
Speaker:And that's where that's why it's important for us to be in the hyperfocus as well because all of those those eureka moments come when you're hyperfocus.
Speaker:And and, of course, when you're interested, when you're in love with what you're doing, when you're enjoying it, actually, it's a pleasure.
Speaker:And and it's just beautiful how that creative part of the brain just starts exploding, and you start picking up a lot of information.
Speaker:I could even just not even hear my colleague's words when I was in the hyperfocus mode.
Speaker:I could just it was just this like, I had this noise cancellation headset without having a nice noise cancellation headset headset when
Speaker:I was in
Speaker:that Mhmm.
Speaker:Hyperfocus mode.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Where where you put the the blinders on and and everything else gets kinda gets tuned out.
Speaker:The other thing that I noticed was very helpful and and then I just kinda happened into this as a practice, but pair programming where you you work with a partner, that helped my code quality like a lot because I would write something and then have my partner check it, a, to make sure it made sense to them too and, b, to catch my, you know, dyscalculia swaps, you know, things and stuff like that that would happen because there was times where I'd write a query or something, and I would transpose a number and get a a wildly weird result that didn't make any sense.
Speaker:And and having another pair of eyes to come back and catch those things was incredibly helpful in a lot of cases.
Speaker:Do you have, particularly, like, long sessions of coding or or large projects that are maybe a little more complex?
Speaker:Do you have do you have difficulty, like, maintaining focus on those, or is that something you're able, like, really get that hyperfocus mode in on?
Speaker:It depends.
Speaker:It depends on the project.
Speaker:So if it's a problem that I am intrinsically motivated to solve, then I can go into that hyperfocus and work on that for 16 hours straight without pausing to drink a water break, which is not great for for self care either.
Speaker:But yeah.
Speaker:So it it depends.
Speaker:It depends on the project.
Speaker:So for for work stuff that is just meeting a deadline, yeah, it can it can be hard to to keep that focus on occasion.
Speaker:But a lot of times when it's when it's a problem that I have intrinsic motivation to solve, then, yeah, I can kick in that that hyperfocus and and go until I'm forced to stop, basically.
Speaker:Does the same apply to whenever you're learning, like, a new technology or or a new type of skill that's been introduced that you kinda have to, like, figure out is because I I go back and forth on a lot of certain things that are related to passions where I have to learn something new in regards to its doing CEUs or something.
Speaker:And while it's, like, definitely a, quote, unquote, special interest, I get that term, even then I sometimes have difficulty kinda, like, maintaining that focus, maintaining that that ability to learn maybe because I think it's a lot of, like, self pressure to learn it efficiently and quickly.
Speaker:And other times, maybe if it's a little bit more simplified or if it's just adjunct to something, I'm able to go into that hyperfocus mode and and learn very efficiently without worrying about it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I've definitely experienced both of those scenarios.
Speaker:And and a lot of times where I struggle is when it's something that I need to learn to get to the thing that I really care about.
Speaker:You know, so those those intermediate steps like I want to solve this problem.
Speaker:To solve this problem, I need to learn this function type of function in Python.
Speaker:I don't really care that much about Python, but to get where I wanna be, I have to learn Python.
Speaker:So and that's just a random example.
Speaker:So that intermediate step of learning Python, I can get impatient with and sometimes we'll hit a wall, you know, where where I am bored with like the the the the really elementary surface level stuff, but don't have a a a strong enough foundation to skip to the more advanced stuff.
Speaker:I kind of hit a wall where I'm stuck in this middle realm.
Speaker:And sometimes I have to recognize when I'm in that space.
Speaker:And what I have found to be the most helpful thing to do in that moment when I'm starting to feel frustrated is to put it away.
Speaker:Not forget about it, not go on to something else, but let that become a background process in my mind and then go on, do something else, get dopamine back up, put some focus on meditation, put some focus on spending time with my kids, something that is gonna help refill my my my cup.
Speaker:And then oftentimes I'll wake up the next day and the the the thing that was that I was having a hard time with will click and then I can keep going, you know?
Speaker:But it's it's all about some of that self narrative is like, I'm not giving up.
Speaker:I'm just gonna I'm gonna put this as a background process for right now, and then I'm gonna go refill my cup.
Speaker:You brought about a really important point.
Speaker:I I I see that in myself too is that it's so important for us to be close to the problem.
Speaker:And that's why you wanna bypass some of the steps and just go close to the problem.
Speaker:And and all the other steps are just feel like obstacles.
Speaker:And I because so I wanna feel the problem and then come up with the solution.
Speaker:So so understanding the problem is critical, and the more closer we are to it, whether it's meeting our clients and getting close to to see the pain of whatever we are trying to solve is critical, and then and then you figure out solutions.
Speaker:And I saw that as you were describing your coding.
Speaker:I same thing.
Speaker:All that.
Speaker:And that's why the frustration happens because you wanna get to the solution really quickly.
Speaker:You're like, oh, I don't want all these methods, but sometimes you have to go through those methods.
Speaker:So just walking away is what a great idea and just giving space for yourself.
Speaker:And
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And early in my career, I I would get in this this bad habit or this bad pattern of giving up, throwing at my hand and saying, you know, I can't do this or whatever.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Negative self talk basically.
Speaker:And that would kind of close that thread in my mind and then it would be much, much, much harder to come back to it.
Speaker:So, you know, over time, I adapted this this idea of, okay, I'm getting frustrated.
Speaker:We're not making any more progress.
Speaker:This is not giving up.
Speaker:I just need to I need to recharge.
Speaker:So we're gonna put this as a background thread.
Speaker:We're not gonna forget about it.
Speaker:We're not giving up.
Speaker:We're gonna go back to it.
Speaker:But my cup is empty.
Speaker:I need to go recharge a little bit.
Speaker:And and that helped me keep the motivation to to continue moving forward while also giving me the the the rest that I needed for so that my my brain could make those neural pathways.
Speaker:You mentioned meditation earlier.
Speaker:What is your what's your favorite way to to get in that headspace?
Speaker:That that's a great question.
Speaker:I'm not very good at it, but I also know that it's very important.
Speaker:So the unsatisfying correct answer is a new novel way every week.
Speaker:I'm always chasing something new that will help.
Speaker:The most consistent thing, and it's not very consistent, but the most consistent thing for me has been putting on my headphones, picking up my guitar, and just trying to get in a liminal space by playing music, you know.
Speaker:Noise canceling headphones, no sound, you know, and and just trying to fill, you know, eyes closed and just try to fill as much of my senses as I can with something rhythmic and pleasing to my nervous system.
Speaker:What do you like to play?
Speaker:Mostly just chord progressions.
Speaker:You know, I just run through chords, simple, you know, power chord progressions.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Just just looking for something that makes that massages my nervous system.
Speaker:So you create your own meditation music because that's what I do.
Speaker:I when I meditate, I'm listening to certain frequency, the meditation frequency, whatever that may be so that you can zone out.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I I can't meditate if my hands aren't busy.
Speaker:So the the act of playing music helps keep my my motor cortex, I guess, occupied and allows me to start closing those those extra tabs that are open.
Speaker:That's honestly, that's why for me, cooking a lot of times is when I meditate.
Speaker:I move around a lot whenever I cook.
Speaker:I do not stand still.
Speaker:I'm doing, like, 50 different things at once.
Speaker:How I don't destroy my kitchen for 1.
Speaker:Also, every meal I make is a miracle, but, yeah, that's I can't sit still.
Speaker:I tried for a long time.
Speaker:An old therapist recommended it to me.
Speaker:Old therapist, I wanna point out, for those type of specific reasons.
Speaker:So he is like it is cooking or just doing something very monotonous that I can let become kind of white noise of activity, or I don't I just the motor kicks in, and it's going.
Speaker:I'm not even paying attention to what I'm doing at a certain point.
Speaker:I do that with a lot of, like, games or if I I need to, like, do a crossword puzzle or, you know, or jigsaw puzzle or something.
Speaker:Just gives me something to continue to do, and then I look down, and I don't even realize that I finished it.
Speaker:And my mind's been wonderfully blank for, like, an hour.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's it's so important to know that meditation is not just that picture that they put out there.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Just sitting and doing it a certain way.
Speaker:It's so many things for me too, like cooking and painting, walking.
Speaker:I can meditate.
Speaker:And but it's important that I'm doing something, but I also have learned to sit in a place and meditate.
Speaker:Now I do it as a practice, everyday practice, for about 10, 15 minutes by visualization.
Speaker:It has to be something else.
Speaker:I it can't just say, oh, just make it a blank slate.
Speaker:It will become blank, but I've we're doing something else.
Speaker:I think we have so much energy in us that we have to be walking, doing something else, like, with our that excess energy we have in our body.
Speaker:Other go to kind of meditation is Minecraft.
Speaker:Sometimes I'll I'll pull up a a blank a new world in Minecraft and just try to clear an area, you know?
Speaker:So just break every block in a 16 by 16 area.
Speaker:Something very repetitive and monotonous, but that requires some focus and that will help get into that liminal state.
Speaker:Important that, you know, not doing anything creative in that that time, but just a repetitive task that requires some some focus and and motor function.
Speaker:I I too like doing that.
Speaker:There's nothing finer than a completely smooth area that you've just spent, like, 2 hours.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'll just flatten the mountain.
Speaker:Go find the mountain.
Speaker:Flatten the mountain.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You mentioned that you have a child who's neurodivergent.
Speaker:I do,
Speaker:in fact.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:How's that parenting a neurodivergent child?
Speaker:And are you taking your lessons from life and passing that along?
Speaker:And what are your challenges?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So the first 7 years well, from from really just 2 years.
Speaker:So from from the time that that she started school to the time of 2nd grade, you know, so 2 or or 3 years in there was a bit of a struggle, a, because I hadn't been diagnosed myself.
Speaker:I could see that she was struggling with a lot of the same things that I struggled with, but I didn't understand the why yet.
Speaker:And I was trying to help her in the same way that I would have liked to be helped, but she's not.
Speaker:She's similar to me, but she's not the same.
Speaker:And we really hit a wall during the pandemic when we were doing distance learning.
Speaker:She could not do it.
Speaker:She couldn't.
Speaker:And I found myself in the same shoes as my parents where I was I had this internal narrative where I was saying, you know, it was laziness or, you know, like that it was defiance, that it was willful, you know, and that that I had to get her to listen basically.
Speaker:And it was frustrating for me and it was frustrating for her.
Speaker:And then through the universe interceding, I'm not really sure, but through TikTok and through the Internet, I came across some content creators that were making content about ADHD and its symptoms and, you know, these experiences and suddenly everything kind of made sense.
Speaker:And at first, it was it made sense for what she was experiencing and then it became it makes sense for what I'm experiencing or have experienced.
Speaker:And that was when we both decided and with some support and recommendation from teachers and some fantastic support staff at our school.
Speaker:We went and sought evaluation for for my daughter and ultimately for myself as well.
Speaker:And once we had that that knowing, you know, that that confirmation that that's what was happening, it was a real paradigm shift both for me and for my daughter because these these tricks and, you know, accommodations that I had been making for myself for years went from being something innate and that I wasn't doing on purpose to something very purposeful and very intentional.
Speaker:And it it made a huge difference.
Speaker:The entire narrative between me and my daughter changed and it became a metaphor that I like to use is playing the parenting game on co op mode or playing it on versus mode.
Speaker:And before that day, we were playing on versus mode.
Speaker:It was my willpower against her willpower and one of us was gonna win and one of us was gonna lose.
Speaker:After that day, it it was co op.
Speaker:It was us against the it was PVE, you know, players against the environment.
Speaker:So we knew that we had a goal that we had to achieve.
Speaker:We had to get her through the grade.
Speaker:We cared less about what the grades said and more that she was just absorbing what she needed to and that she was doing her best.
Speaker:And as long as she was giving her best, that was all that we asked for.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:And if that meant that she got a C, okay, you did your best.
Speaker:I can't expect more than that from you, you know.
Speaker:And some of that was driving her to give her best because she didn't always want to, you know.
Speaker:When it became a narrative of we're doing this together and not you need to do what I say, it, you know, and and building that trust that, hey, I am on your team.
Speaker:I'm on I'm on team Leila, and we're gonna succeed together.
Speaker:That that changed everything.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It it's the same.
Speaker:I had the exact same experience, and it's so amazing that when you do that so that means you have to drop your ego, at least through my experience.
Speaker:I don't wanna that's what I felt of being older, having had so many years of experience, and and then actually get on their side and actually work with them, it's magical.
Speaker:And it's beautiful how things will start resolving on its own.
Speaker:But but, with parents out there, there what breaks my heart is that because of this this negative stigma around the name and with the diagnosis, people are in denial.
Speaker:They'd rather not get the diagnosis.
Speaker:They'd rather think that their child is normal.
Speaker:And and as a result of that, they are not learning so many things about neurodivergency and about the individual, and and that breaks my heart when because of the name.
Speaker:Because it's way with ADHD, it's way more than attention deficit.
Speaker:I mean, because they can have attention.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And it's not a disorder.
Speaker:There's nothing wrong with the brain.
Speaker:But because they don't want to get the diagnosis they are not learning and not working with the child.
Speaker:So it's so critical to get the diagnosis.
Speaker:And, of course, there's nothing wrong with the brain.
Speaker:It is the way that's the brain, and let's learn to work with it and not try to make the brain something else.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:A great metaphor that I heard once, and I I wish I could remember where I heard it so I can give it credit, but the disorder what I heard is, you know, the the disorder comes from a zebra pretending and trying and trying to convince itself that it's a horse every day.
Speaker:Going in in a herd of horses, trying to be a horse and internalizing, you know, your own disappointment at the fact that you're not a horse.
Speaker:When you are a zebra in a herd of horses, you know, that is where it becomes a disorder is is when you stop trying when you're trying to be something other than a zebra.
Speaker:But if you put a zebra in a herd of zebras, it doesn't look weird.
Speaker:There's no disorder.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:The zebra is being a zebra, you know.
Speaker:So that is kind of the a metaphor that I like for it, you know.
Speaker:And a lot of like the medication and treatments that, you know, conventional medicine and conventional science would prescribe is trying to make a zebra into a horse.
Speaker:And the the only way that you're ever gonna have a positive outcome is if you let the zebra be a zebra.
Speaker:And, you know, sometimes that means telling the horses, Hey, that's a zebra and it's okay that that's a zebra.
Speaker:You know, and other times it's putting the zebra with other zebras, you know.
Speaker:But, you know, there's a place for medication.
Speaker:I don't wanna say that I'm anti medication, but only when the goal is to make you a better zebra and not make you a horse.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I I love the zebra metaphor.
Speaker:I just pictured the zebra painting the black stripes away to make it a horse.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And that's masking.
Speaker:Mhmm.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And and that ultimately, if it showers, the the paint's gonna come away, and and the zebra the stripes are gonna be shown, and it's gonna feel uncomfortable because the zebra has been trying to hide its true colors, and and I just love that metaphor.
Speaker:I was always looking for 2 animals, and I used to say, oh, me, cat, a horse or something, but I just love the zebra and the horse comparison.
Speaker:It just and and even and it's okay for the zebra to be in in a group of horses.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:It it Mhmm.
Speaker:The zebra should be comfortable standing out and being itself, and it's important for the other horses to recognize that it's okay for the zebra to be zebra and be like your zebra for for being yourself.
Speaker:It's so it's not just the zebra, but it's also the environment.
Speaker:About removing the baseline the mirage of baseline, quote, unquote, normal.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Because, you know, continuing with that metaphor, the baseline of the zebras and the horde of horses is the baseline is horses if they wanna make a baseline.
Speaker:But if you put a horse in a herd of zebras, the baseline zebras, it's all you can create one out of thin air no matter what the situation is.
Speaker:The truth of the matter is is there is no true baseline, and when you don't try to force people into the mirage of baseline normal, That's when they're able to thrive.
Speaker:That's when you're able to listen and understand and not repeat the same echo chamber of experiences of past generations that didn't know better than to go about the go about things the way they went about things because that's the way they grew up or that's how they learned and instead go a little bit outside their purview.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, it's it's all about understanding that it's okay.
Speaker:Like, there is no normal.
Speaker:Normal doesn't exist.
Speaker:Everybody is some shade on the spectrum, you know, and wherever your shade happens to fall, it's fine.
Speaker:You know, it's it's you, that's fine, and you are okay, you know, as you are.
Speaker:And, you know, you don't need to be anything that you're not.
Speaker:That's that's wonderful.
Speaker:Thank thank you so much, Josh, for sharing your insights with us, giving us a, like, a little bit view into what has transformed you over the course of your life and help you and your daughter's life equally.
Speaker:Where can everybody kind of, like, search you out and find you and contact you if they like?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You can find me on LinkedIn, you know, for for professional sources and you can find me at my website at rastetterpm.com.
Speaker:That's probably the best ways to get in touch with me at this time.
Speaker:Working on on building out my social profile a little bit more, but right now, that's that's, where where I'm easiest to get in touch with.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:And I'll be sure to include all of those into the show notes for this episode so everyone can find them there.
Speaker:For Spark Launch, you can always find us at sparklaunchpodcast.com.
Speaker:We're available on all the various platforms.
Speaker:Please rate and review us if you'd like.
Speaker:You can follow Chaya @the_sparklaunch on Instagram.
Speaker:And of course, we're both on LinkedIn.
Speaker:I'm @followhis ghost on Instagram.
Speaker:And there you can find links to my peer support groups starting in also just an autism support group here soon and anxiety and stress.
Speaker:Thank you again, Josh for for joining us.
Speaker:And we'd love to have you back on sometime.
Speaker:But for now, we'll see you next time.
