#34 My Autistic Brother and I

This episode started with a comment on a post I made saying about the support parents give their Autistic children.

Nausheen Junaid replied - and siblings 

That was the start of this episode as it's true, parents will see it different to children. Both will see it different to the autistic person themselves. Don't get me started on the tutting person across the room who has no appreciation for peoples differences.

Nausheen tells us about her career and we talk about social media and mental health. Both of these subjects come up again later when we speak about Hassan.

We talk about hoe schools and places of support have impacted Hassan's mental health. My thoughts are a lack of training.

So why is it our autistic friends get less than us?

Voiceover for intro and outro by Jennie Eriksen | LinkedIn

Music granted free of charge very kindly by Music: https://www.purple-planet.com . The track is called Hope and Inspire.

Transcript

0:46

Welcome back to the All 4 Inclusion pod. This week I'm joined by Nausheen. Nausheens brother is autistic and I thought it would be good and interesting insight to see it from a sibling's perspective. So without further ado. Let's just jump right in

Scott Whitney: 1:13

Welcome to this episode of the All 4 Inclusion pod. Today, joining me is Nausheen So my research, my pre podcast research, bringing out four things that may or may not be correct and Nausheen will tell me if something is wrong. So no, she's not got autistic brother. I believe she swam with sharks.

Nausheen Junaid: 1:42

Swam with sharks. Oh, no,

Scott Whitney: 1:44

I made that one up.

Nausheen Junaid: 1:46

I think you meant that one up. No, it wasn't sharkks, unfortunately. It was just fish, like standard fish, Oh, okay. No, I'm not sharks. No, I'm not that brave. no.

Scott Whitney: 1:57

Okay, that's one down, went to Uni in Manchester and is a copywriting genius.

Nausheen Junaid: 2:05

You kinda got there, Yeah, just the one's part of what I do. Yeah. So I'm, I don't know do you want me to do my introduction now? Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. So I'm a marketing consultant. So essentially what that means is I work with small to medium sized businesses on different areas of marketing. And it's usually digital marketing. So we're looking at websites, social media email marketing, but I specialize more so within social media marketing. Predominantly organic content creation. Obviously organic engagement. And so I will work on kind of social media management of accounts and also ad management, which is obviously I think most people know what ad management is, but it's just social media ads, so sponsored ad paid ads on different platforms. So that's what I do. Copywriting is has obviously big functionality in terms of marketing I would say my copywriting skills are decent, but it's not something that I specialize in. So I wouldn't call myself a copywriter. I'll just call myself a consultant because I consult with businesses. And another part of what I do is also for example, if someone came to me with an issue usually what I do is I get my problem solving hat on and I solve the issue. So I'll suggest different ways of possibly, let's just say increasing sales. If there's an a reason as to why something's not working on their website, I might suggest, a solution for that. So that's probably where the consulting part comes in quite a lot because I did a master's degree. So a lot of it is looking at data analytics and that's probably where the consulting aspect of my job goes into falls into, sorry. Yeah, hopefully that's a good introduction to what I do.

Scott Whitney: 3:58

Yeah, you said most people know what ad management is. Yeah. I know that. But when you talk about organic engagement and organic creation, what's, what is what is that?

Nausheen Junaid: 4:11

So organic. So my background is very much content creation. So I studied digital media when I was at uni. And so we did life. So I studied photography, videography even simple things as, for example, conducting an interview with somebody. So my knowledge in terms of content goes into quite a lot of depth. I've studied content for the last, I wanna say 10 years. So that's one of the reasons why I fell into social media, because obviously social media is all about content. When we see organic content, it's, for example, things that you will see as you're scrolling through your feed is what people post. It can be anything from videos to photos, to stories to, the reels that you see on Instagram and, short form videos, long form videos. It can be podcasts, it can be anything really. Content itself is such a huge sphere, there's so much to it, but organic essentially just means things that people are posting without possibly having any kind of money behind it. For example, it's not necessarily benefiting. Instagram, Facebook, all these different platforms where we are paying for. Content to be seen, but at the same time, you're looking at influencer marketing where brands are paying for their content to be seen. Because a lot of the times influencers will charge a fee for their, for them to collaborate with a brand and for their content to be seen. So actually influencer marketing can be seen as both organic, unpaid because you sometimes influencers may review a product or service for free. Other times obviously that usually depends on, for example, their following. But then other times obviously they will charge, you've got big content creators. YouTubers, for example, they will of course charge because they have such a big following and they can generate sales for a lot of big brands. So yeah, that, I hope that kind of answers that question.

Scott Whitney: 6:07

Yeah. Yeah. And I guess when you're talking about influencers and products and stuff, Just going through the roof. I guess Prime is is a big example of that.

Nausheen Junaid: 6:19

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Prime is a content creator's brand. Like it was obviously Logan Paul KSI have come together to create that brand. They already had the backing behind them. They've had the big audience, they've got such a big following. They've got, and they've both got different types of following. And they're obviously targeting a younger audience, which predominantly all of these platforms have a younger audience, obviously, possibly apart from LinkedIn, I would say. And Facebook has more of a an older audience. But you're looking at, for example, TikTok, which is huge now Instagram, which is also huge. And even YouTube, which YouTube has quite a varied audience depending on what kind of content you're consuming. But yeah, Logan Paul and Ksi are big content creators. So they're, I think their success. possibly would've been predicted a very long time ago, to be fair with Prime.

Scott Whitney: 7:13

Excellent. And we spoke right at the beginning about before we started recording about social media and mental health. Yeah. So from your perspective what do you think are the main positives of social media and then the main kind of negatives as well?

Nausheen Junaid: 7:35

Personally for myself, I think social media is a positive is a positive platform because it's helped lots of businesses generate sales. It's helped them to gain exposure that they would never have been able to do offline or an on any other platform. For example, you have a website, but how do you get people to your website? How do you get them to actually purchase your product or service? Yes, we have Google, but. Google is not there to entertain people. It's just there. For example, if someone's searching for something, it's there to help them find whatever they're searching for. It's a search engine. Whereas social media is essentially an entertaining platform. It's there to entertain people. So usually what will happen is you are taken through this journey. Consuming the content from this brand. So you're almost being educated about the brand or product or service that, that they're wanting to sell. And it happens over a period of time, so it won't happen straight away. But at the same time, people, a lot of brands forget that people want to be entertained. And so when you look up the success stories of content creators on, in, on, Instagram, TikTok, whichever platform it is, YouTube they essentially entertain people. And then on the flip side, you have people are brands on social media who. Are very much forcing sales on people. The me the sales messaging is so strong to the point where no one wants to follow them if they see their content and they just scroll past that. And so you have a mixture of that on social media now, and it's very saturated because more and more brands are joining social media platforms. But for me, I would say my, where my mental health within the like last few years has been affected. On LinkedIn is, for example, seeing posts where people are being very unrealistic about how their business has grown within three months. I saw a post from someone I'm not gonna mention any names, I don't wanna call it anybody here, but I saw a post from a young lad who's probably around like 24, 25 years old, who basically was re was made redundant from his job and ended up, creating an agency within six months and being in that position myself, where I'm setting up my own agency. And I'm, from my understanding as I, as a co kind of content he's put out it suggests that he's doing all of this pretty much on his own. I know right now he has a team behind him, but it wasn't the case when he officially started, he started again, similar to me as a consultant or whatever you wanna, that name, that label that you want to give him. But he essentially started on his own. Didn't really have any of any following. And slowly was posting on LinkedIn and, managed to build up a following. I think he was very active on LinkedIn, possibly posting every single day networking with people, which is great. 100% is, it's something that you should be doing if you really wanna get your business out there. See quick growth. But to say that you went from zero to a hundred within six months I'm sorry, but what kind of message are you putting out to there, out there to people who are part of your network?

Scott Whitney: 10:47

There's so many like different things that I picked up on, like obviously you got, you touched upon the hustle. I think that's the kind of term and I can remember like when I was young, I used to be more of a hustle person or I dunno if it was really hustle, but it was definitely long hours involved. Yeah. But actually the advice I would give anyone, is down to them what they want to do. But I would say, you need to have a look at your life as a 360 and if you are, what you're putting into that hustle, you are missing out on other areas. You know the algorithm, you're gonna get signal in front of X amount of people and some of those people will buy into what you're saying and others will see right through it. And finally you mentioned kind of family and with that, that's why we're speaking today really. But you said like from the age of five how independent you are. Yeah. In the kind of three of siblings, where do you sit? Are you the eldest or you in the middle or?

Nausheen Junaid: 11:55

I'm in the middle def. Yeah. I'm the middle child. So middle child syndrome was definitely a big problem. my life growing up. Yeah. So I have two older sisters, then it's me, then I have three younger brothers. Okay. So yeah, very much in the middle. Slightly back in the middle. bang in there. Yeah. The reason why we're speaking today, and as but people listening won't do is obviously one of your, one of your brothers is autistic. Yes. I put a post out six months ago maybe to say along the lines of we need. To be mindful of people who are autistic, but also appreciate the work and effort that goes into being a parent and some of the battles and fights and you put along the lines of siblings need to be noted as well. A and yeah, completely agree. Completely agree. Are you, how,

Scott Whitney: 12:48

what's the sort of age gap between you and your brother?

Nausheen Junaid: 12:51

Three years. So he's 27. I'm 30.

Scott Whitney: 12:55

So was you, did you go through school with him?

Nausheen Junaid: 12:58

Is it the same school? Yes. Yeah, I did. Yeah. So when I was when I was in year six, he was in year three. I believe I've, oh gosh, it's been such a long time. but I'm pretty sure that's how primary school works here in the uk. So yeah, we went to school together. We were in school together for a long time actually. But we didn't go to the same secondary school. My brother I would say in terms of his autism it was quite severe when he was younger. Yeah. He had quite a lot of behavioral issues. And, growing up around that was cause because, because like I said he was born straight after me, like three years after me. Because of the fact that he was born, after me, we were very close and I think he's probably the closest to me than he's with the rest of my siblings. And Yeah, and I think it's also because of the, the age gap between us. And I spent the most amount of time with him, so through school, even at home but through school, yeah. We spent a lot of time together. And I remember, he got into, I think during primary school, he never actually got into any kind of mischief because he was, I think he was still developing his personality and. He was very much he had a lot of support around him in primary school. But then during secondary school, because you have a lot more students, he lost, he got got a little bit lost. Even though they have like certain units which will look after people with special needs, for example. I think for him it became very overwhelming that he no longer had the support of a sibling with him, cause I was there with him throughout most of his time in primary school. He had the mixture of females around him and males and their classes were obviously mixed people, mixed abilities and, needs. I don't think at the very beginning when he went to secondary school, he didn't have the support there. And even though like my parents made the school aware that he was autistic and so I think when, possibly when he got to around year nine, That's when he started gaining more support from, these teaching assistants and people who had more experience of working with people with special needs. But yeah, he was, I remember there was so many incidents where he run away, he run out of school he got into trouble with other students. And yeah, so I, I think, and I think around that age is when, they start getting towards, puberty and stuff. So I think that's probably what it was as well. He didn't know what was going on with his body, like these, all these changes were happening, but he didn't know. He didn't know how to deal with it. And at the same time when, he was at school, he wasn't being taught anything about this, these changes to his body and, they were teaching him subjects in a way that they would teach everybody else. But obviously people with autism have different levels of understanding and different levels of learning. And so my brother. He, his kind of mindset developed at a much later age. From a younger age, from even a young age, he struggled a lot with understanding things and, even with his speech as well. So in school, I think a lot of the, a lot of his development was around communication. Expressing your expressing your feelings, learning how to read cuz these are the, all the things that he wasn't able to do really when he was in primary school. So he, what we would've learned in primary school, he had to learn when he got secondary school. So he was behind everybody else. So there's all these things that he was struggling with. And then on top of that, not having that support when he was at school. And I think as well at the time, cause it was quite a long time ago now. I don't think a lot of people understood autism, even within the know the public sector within schools and stuff. I don't think they very much fully understood how to deal with people who have autism, how to teach them, and how to make them understand different concepts. There was a lots of things that he struggled with and, and I think not having, for example, my mom, who's been like a very big coping mechanism for him throughout his whole life, not having her there. He struggled because, the way that he misbehaved when he was in school, if my parents were there, or even if I myself were there or, my other sisters were there with him I don't think he would ever have reacted in those ways. There were, he also. there was, he's been into in lots of different institutions. So he went from one school to another school to colleges where he's been, had to where he's had to leave those institutions because they didn't know how to support him. Yeah, it's, yeah, I would say it's although I wasn't there with him in school, we had to very much support him when he was at home because school affected his mental health, that he was exposed to a lot more things than he was exposed to when he was at home. He was learning about, for example, sex. He didn't really know anything about that. So he would come home and ask my parents, and it's parents are, we're South Asian. We don't talk about that kind of stuff, So the, so it was also this whole thing about with culture as well, that was another thing that he struggled with. Was being around lots of Asian people. He prefers to be around more English people. And I think it's because of the fact that growing up he's had mostly English support workers, social workers around him. So he's used to that. And and he feels more comfortable because they don't judge him.

Scott Whitney: 18:11

And then when he came home and he would speak to your parents, obviously autistic people mask quite a lot. And I assume in school he was wearing a mask. Would he be open with your parents or would he wear a mask when he is speaking to your parents and then confide more in yourself?

Nausheen Junaid: 18:33

No, I think he's always been open with my parents. My mom has been around some people with for example special needs because she before she got married, she was actually a teaching assistant to people with special needs. So I think my mom's always had that understanding of how to speak to him, there's a certain way that she would speak to him, whereas my dad would speak to him like how he would speak to us, but it doesn't work because he has got a different level of understanding. Whereas my dad, it took him a very long time to understand that. So for him, my mom was like his comfort blanket. So he would go to her if he had any issues. and then if it was certain issues that my mom wouldn't be, wouldn't understand, for example, let's just. Relationships or whatever, something that he knows that is something that's new to our generation. And it's something that obviously my mom's from an older generation, so he, something that she possibly won't have been exposed to when she was growing up. Then he'd come to me, or my sisters, mostly it was me because he knew that this sister has more of an open mindset. She won't try to change my mind. She'll just try to understand that, this is life and this is the way I am, et cetera. I would say he confided mostly in my mom and in me, but he never must his feelings. He's very open about his feelings. If he wanted to cry, he would have a good cry. If he was angry, he would be angry. He would throw things around. He had very, he's got very much of a temper on him. So when he's not able to express his emotions and struggles with kind of, Getting us to understand how he's feeling. He will throw things around, he might swear as well, and he'll even say, why are you not fucking understanding me? He'll say things like that, And it's yeah, we know that you're going through a hard time, so we have to try and calm him down. And then, he then, and then he'll like slowly start to understand. But even then sometimes there was still that barrier because, he's not fully, he, that understanding's still not fully developed even at the age of 27. And so he'll, sometimes he'll say, when you try to explain something to him, he'll say, I don't understand. Why is it like that? I don't understand. And with certain things, when you're trying to explain, for example, you can't be, you can't follow a woman around because that's wrong. That's, it's a crime to do that. You can't stop people. So he'll, he don't, doesn't understand why it's a crime, because to him he's thinking, oh, If you like a girl, wouldn't you wanna follow her? Wouldn't you wanna talk to her? But, so he, these, there's these types of concepts which he try to explain to him, but he won't understand. And it's one of those ones where it takes time to really get him to understand. And sometimes there's a conflict of religion, culture. Things that he sees on in the media, because he's very active on social media. Like he posts on social media, he'll post on TikTok. He even watches TikTok, like avidly. Every single day he's on TikTok. I hear it all the time. TikTok videos in the background, So when he's consuming all this content, that's confusing him even more. And he, because he's being exposed to a lot more, so he's being taught you shouldn't do this. But then on TikTok, he's seeing people do exactly what he's been told not to do. Because you're on, on social media, people are doing all sorts of controversial things. So he's then becoming more confused as to, okay, so I've been told not to do this, but, and now I'm seeing people who look exactly like me, same age as me doing exactly that. So why are you telling me I can't do that? There's still things that he will struggle with to the point where now he has to take medication to help with his behavior because he suffers with extreme anxiety, which is something that we weren't really aware of on up until. I think that around the age of 2021. He really his anxiety really became more prominent. And that was when my mom soughted mental health for him. She went out to that mental health services. I wanted to know if there was any support that we could get for him because his behavior as he grew up actually started to get worse. And because like I said, he was exposed to a lot more. So he was be, there was all these different ideologies that he was being exposed to, that he was a conflict for him. All conflicting ideas that he had in his head about, how he should live his life, how he should be, even certain things. For example, how, what kind of foods to eat. And he's very active, he likes to socialize. On the other hand, with certain autistic people, they don't like to so socialize, like they wanna stay away from that. Whereas he likes to socialize, he wants to be part of groups and stuff, and he likes to talk to people, but he only likes to talk to people if he gets the benefit out of them

Scott Whitney: 23:20

I can imagine, how difficult it must have been for your brother because you said you've got very traditional culture in your family. And then obviously going around potentially a very kind of, British Society, school, and the rules, I guess they're I guess they're rules, but they're not laws. if you get what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. It's not something that you might be imprisoned for, but it might have been what people morally expect. Being very difficult. So for yourself then your brother's come home and he's not had a good day and how he's explained it to you it seems like someone's not really being fair with him, whether it be a teacher or something like that. How does that kind of impact you?

Nausheen Junaid: 24:23

That's a good question. I guess the best way to answer that one is relate to the way he behaves when he's coming back from school. There were a few incidents where so he would actually have transport that would take him to and from school. So when he would come back, the taxi driver would come in and say, oh, he was being disruptive in the taxi. He was disrupting everybody else. So I had to bring him inside. My mom would be like, oh, what did you do? How was your day at school? And he'd say, I wasn't allowed to do this and I don't understand why I wasn't allowed to do that. And so my mom would try to explain to him and then he'd say why am I not allowed to do that? And so the way he would react like I said, for example, he might have a temper tantrum where he would throw things about, he would swear. And if it's something that's really bugging him, what he usually does is he'll go into my parents' room at night and he won't let them sleep. And I, and for me, I'm a light sleeper, so if I can hear him, it affects me when I'm trying to sleep. I can't sleep And sometimes what he will do as well is he'll start knocking on people's doors at night so that, he's getting that attention from everyone. Whatever issue he's having is being addressed because eventually he knows somebody's gonna come out really ri and be like, what's the problem, you're not letting me sleep. So that's usually how he react. He basically will do anything and everything until he gets a reaction out of somebody until somebody physically sits down with him and say, okay, this is what we're gonna do tomorrow. We're gonna call this person, we'll call your teacher. We'll explain that. Okay, Hassan might need a bit more support here, or whatever it is. Then once he knows that you're gonna do something about it, then he can go to sleep in peace. And and it's been difficult because he's done that very often, like growing up, he used to do that all the time. And he used to have this rule where, for the three of my sisters, and so sometimes we would go to stay at my cousin's house. He would not be able to live without us. So what he would do was he'd go into our room and count to make sure there's three of us in our room. If one person was missing, he would cry and cry and say to my parents, that person has to come home. They're not allowed to sleep at anybody's, anybody else's house. They have to be at home. So my mom would have to go and get that person from my cousin's house. Then we'd be like, I just wanna stay at somebody's house at home. just wanna have a sleepover And once he could see that you were tucked away in bed at night, safe and sound, your fast asleep, that's when he would go into his own room and go to sleep.

Scott Whitney: 27:04

On Twitter there's a lot of parents I know have problems. with local governments getting education plans in place and also with with their child, let's say forgetting a pen. And the reaction from the teacher is over the top. It could be not wearing a jumper, but actually what the teachers not regarding is the seam of the jumper is aggravating. Their child. So much. It's, I dunno, it's for someone who's neurotypical it would be, we wouldn't be able to imagine how bad that feels. Did, did your brother have any of that either in school or after school?

Nausheen Junaid: 27:56

From teachers. Oh, yeah. I think I guess this could be like, there's possibly two sides to this one. So not when he was in school, but when he was actually so he used to go to this the Centre for people with autism. So it's just specifically people who have autism. So he was around people that, he could possibly relate to, people who probably have a bit more understanding of, of the issues that he's going through. He fixates on certain things or people. There was this person who used to work at this autistic centre. And he became quite fixated with her. But at the same time, that fixation doesn't just start, from nowhere. She basically possibly took in my opinion, she possibly overstepped her,ark as somebody who was a member of staff where she would physically go and hug him. And so that to him made him think that, oh, she likes me. Because when, if you are working with people who have autism, that those are the kind of things that you should be aware of that, they can become quite fixated with her because what would happen is, I think every day he, every time he would come into the autistic center, she would say, oh, hi Hassan, how are you? And then she would hug him, which isn't necessary, really. It's for example, you're going to school and your teacher's hugging you, they're not gonna be doing that necessarily. They may only hug you, for example, if you're upset about something. they may comfort you, but they're not gonna overstep that mark where they're gonna go out their way to hug you every single day when you're coming through the door. So he obviously got the wrong idea and thought that she liked him. So he became fixated on this idea that, okay, she likes me. So what happened was, I think he confronted her about this and he said, I like you. I'd like to get to know you, kind of thing. And she was like, no, I'm a staff member here. We can't I, I'm already with someone. I'm in a relationship. And so to him, he thought to himself she's been making advances towards me and now she's telling me that she's not interested. She's with somebody. So he couldn't accept that because to him it was almost as though she was making those advances towards him, because otherwise he would never have been interested. The thought would never have crossed his mind. And so what happened was they, that an incident happened within this center where he ended up locking them both into a room and he never hurt her. He was no physical toward or anything. He just wanted to understand why she had rejected him, that rejection possibly really affected him mentally. What happened was when obviously when they called my parents, my mom went down to to the autism center to, to get him. And so she asked me, she said look what happened, because the thing is with. And my brother will never lie about anything. He's very upfront, very honest about the way things ha, have happened and the way the situation transpired. So he told her, look, she's been hugging me every single day. He never told any of us that this had happened. So this was news to us because otherwise, we would've thought that's actually inappropriate. She shouldn't be doing that as a staff member. But my, that was the first time when my mom had heard about that. So my mom actually said to the, the the people who work there, that's inappropriate. She should know that she shouldn't be behaving like that towards, first of all, another me. Cuz it's like almost a teacher student relationship shouldn't be giving in that way. And also she should know that he's autistic and he has fixations towards people because, that's a kind of common autistic trait. And if she's working in an autism center around people who are like this, she should be aware of this and not put herself in this position. of course we spoke to my brother and we, tried to explain to him that this isn't something that you don't lock people into rooms. If you wanna talk to someone, you ask them to sit down and talk with you in a respectful way. So we explained all of that to him. But to him, he also was like but she hugged me. He couldn't get, he couldn't not move past this thing that she hooked me and she's been saying hello to me every single day. Nobody else has been doing that, so to him, he couldn't get over that. And I even remember, it got to a point where he had to leave because he couldn't concentrate when he was in these sessions. In these workshops and stuff cuz she was there. We had to actually take him out of the autism center, which was hard

Scott Whitney: 32:15

I think you look back at that situation and how, was it fair that Hassan had to move?

Nausheen Junaid: 32:23

Yeah. How was it fair? He had to leave. He's losing. The support. He's the one losing everything. When realistically, could that staff member have done enough training? Specifically around with autistic, young autistic people. Yeah. If that training was better, then your brother wouldn't have had to have leave. Exactly. Cuz they actually took him out of there because they thought that he was a danger to her. But how can someone like that be a danger to anyone when he's. she's the one who's who put them. She's the one who actually put them in that situation to begin with, and now he's having to leave that environment where he was very comfortable before any of this happened. For him, and then he start, and I think from there, that's when his mental health started to take a bit of a downturn because it, because He thought that he'd done something wrong and that, that he was a bad person, that he shouldn't have done that.

Scott Whitney: 33:29

It's like a safeguarding kind of issue as well in there. And then finally, so I think a lot of people who listen to to the show will pick episodes based on their lived experience of people around them. There could be a parent who's listening to this episode who has an autistic child who may be looking for tips, advice, and maybe strategies or maybe just a bit of a pick me up. So they would probably speak to lots of parents in similar situations. Yeah. But this is from a different angle. So from a sibling's perspective, what advice would you give to that parent?

Nausheen Junaid: 34:20

That's a very difficult one actually, because with autism, it, because it, there's such a big spectrum, there's some obviously people who are, have very mild autism and you've got very, very severe autism. And I think my brother's probably in the middle I can only really speak from my own experiences of how my brother is. I think being, understanding, being as understanding as possible is key really with people who have autism. And, for example, I'll I'll say sometimes my dad will tease my brother and my mom will have to tell him off because that makes my brother feel like, you're not taking him seriously. And so it makes him feel worse about himself. But, and sometimes I think parents don't always have that understanding on how to make their children feel, that you are, that you are understanding them. And so yeah, it's really important to find that middle ground where, you know, That the main thing for someone who has autism is just knowing that you are there, you are listening to them. Listening is so important. Even if it's something that you think is so out of the blue, and you just think it's ridiculous, you still have to listen to them. Cuz to them it's not ridiculous. Like it's something that they've been thinking about for a long time or whatever it is. You have to listen. Listening is so important and sitting down and ha and giving them time because one thing I realized my brother is he really wants attention. So when he usually plays up is when he's not getting that attention. So I, and I know it can be very difficult, especially from the point of view of a parent. Cause of course I'm around my mom a lot, so I can see she's very busy, looking after other siblings. So sometimes she's not able to always give him that time, but when he plays up it's because he's not had that attention from her. Yeah. So I think a lot of it comes down to communication. Taking the time to understand what the problem is, why they're feeling that way, letting them, show their emotions as well. Because sometimes if you're not giving them that attention, they won't show you how they're feeling. They won't express their emotions very well, like you said, like they may mask their emotions because if some, if you are that comfortable with somebody, you won't necessarily mask your emotions. You will let yourself feel however you're feeling. And it's the same thing for people with autism. They will be very open with their emotions and feelings if they feel comfortable enough to do and the only time they won't do that is when they don't feel comfortable. And I think a lot of people, a lot of parents don't. the autistic children. Enough of that, enough attention, enough love. And there's not enough listening really to what the problem is. Why do you feel that way? What's happening? Has something happened, when you were at school, when you were at college, wherever it is, when you're at work?

Scott Whitney: 37:15

Excellent. Excellent. Nausheen, thank you so much for for coming on for sharing your experiences and, it's a, I think the kind of neurodiverse How people are treated, how society needs to adapt to people who are neurodiverse, not the other way around. There's so much more to talk about on that. But thank you so much for for coming on and talking to us.

Nausheen Junaid: 37:46

You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. This is like the first podcast I've ever done, hopefully many more to come. Hopefully you'll get me on again.

Scott Whitney: 37:56

So. That was Nausheen and her lived experience. Growing up with her brother who's autistic. I think it really shows the bond between her and Hassan. Is very, very strong. I think there will be things that some people will disagree with as well. Lots of people will, will resonate with, and that's always going to be the case when we're talking about autistic people. Because it's so varied. It is so different. But I think. The more and more people. Talk about it. The more stories that are shared. The more we learn and the more we can appreciate the individuality. The flexibility required. So, uh, coming up next week is Jolene. Um, She's autistic herself. And she's a parent autistic children as well. So we'll hopfully get is a comparison to as to her experience, comparing it to Nausheens. And that will then give us a. Give us a sort of 360 intake. So, um, If you are listening on, uh, on Spotify. That will be some questions there and it gives you the chance to leave some feedback on every single episode. So, um, so feel free to do so. And obviously if you can follow or subscribe. Thank. Thank you