Jodie Clarke, Children's Well-being Practitioner & Autism Specialist

05/01/2026

First day back at the laptop and the winter bugs take hold 😖!

If you are expecting to hear from me/have emailed/messaged and awaiting a response, please be assured, a little nudge or prompt is always appreciated!!

It’s not that I don’t care about each reach out, it’s just my ADHD/ peri menopause brain fog causes memory issues!

05/01/2026

"This is not a failure of functioning. This is biological wisdom."

As an advocate for re-wilding and living authentically, this article sings to me.

A great reminder to "learn to listen" to our bodies. Thank you Jade Farrington - Counsellor and Therapist and Natasha

How can you listen to your body when the world is insisting you push through and just get on with it?

Natasha Leahy of Karuna Therapeutic Services introduces us to Somatic Wintering: A non-pathologising, compassionate way of honouring periods of withdrawal, fatigue, low energy, and deep restoration.

It offers neurodivergent people a framework for understanding experiences that are often misunderstood, medicalised, or pushed away.

04/01/2026

For many the social, executive functioning, sensory and neuro-normative demands of the school day cause overwhelm, social hangovers, exhaustion, anxiety, masking and dysregulation.

After school can be a time where, as parents we are left to manage the overspill and/or release of suppressed emotions and turmoil.

Children need time and space to decompress.

HOWEVER it’s IMPORTANT to note that if our children are in constant state of masking, hyper vigilance and/or distress throughout the school and release this at home, we need to consider the ongoing and harmful impact this has on their nervous systems, energies and mental health.

Dysregulation indicates unmet needs and curiosity around lived experience and working collaboratively to understand, accept and support is essential.

For more information on the challenges faced by neurodivergent children in school and energy accounting, please see my website pages.

01/01/2026

January is midwinter and a time to protect energy x

31/12/2025

Literally had fireworks on and off since 8.45pm!!!
If they wake my poorly child I’m going to pi**ed off!

Neurotypicals have reportedly decided to celebrate the same thing happening in the same way again by standing outside in the cold and watching ten minutes of fireworks soundtracked by We are the Champions before heading back inside and moving on completely.

Speaking from a rooftop party, which is like a normal party but everyone thinks it’s mad sexy for some reason, 34-year-old Ryan Wilkins said: “I can’t wait for the fireworks! It’s the only time I get to ooh and ahh at the pretty explosives, feel irrationally jubilant for five minutes while I hug and kiss people I normally don’t give a s**t about, and then let a creeping sense of dread take hold of me as I sip chilled Prosecco in the dead of winter. Beth, look, they’re lighting the fireworks!”

Wilkins’ girlfriend Beth Hapworth, 37, said: “Before I left the flat today, I told my flatmate I’d see her next year instead of tomorrow! Haha! Because tomorrow is next year! Haha! This is the only time you can make this joke, and then you have to wait another 365 days before you can tell it again! I need to do this otherwise I’ll be forced to confront the fact that time is completely meaningless! Except when there’s fiiiireworks!”

Attendee Pippa Durham, 29, reportedly “cannot wait” for 2026. “The first week of January is full of hope and possibility, and then it all falls apart and you realise you could have joined the gym any time you wanted to because you’d have been just as likely to stick with it in October. But fi-yer-works!”

“Imagine if I find someone to kiss! The only thing better than bright loud things is bright loud things while other people are touching you. FIRE! WORKS!”

Read more: https://thedailytism.com/neurotypicals-mark-arbitrary-passage-of-time-with-more-f**king-fireworks/

31/12/2025

New years eve 2025
And we have a new galaxy lamp 😍
HNY all. ###

30/12/2025

Leaving Be

It can be best to let PDA teens get on with things in their own way

Even if you’re itching to intervene

We PDA people need to find our own ways in life

Even gentle guidance will likely be demand triggering

www.pda-insiders.com

30/12/2025

So today I’ve learnt that the days between Christmas and New year are informally known as “merrineum”…. A bringing together of “merry” and “neum” as in perineum! Bringing together Christmas and New year.

Yet, so many of us find this time to be very much not “merry”!!

Most of us crash! And each year the velocity and intensity of it seems to take me by complete surprise, often only remembering the previous year from time hops!!

It doesn’t seem to matter that I’ve worked hard on making it low demand and neuro affirming……… oh hang on!!!! Oh god, as I’ve typed I’ve realised I’ve said “I’ve worked hard”!!!

Ok… realisation, actually making it safe, enjoyable, comfortable for everyone makes it bloody exhausting!! The pressure of enough to make memories and joy but not too much that produces overwhelm and causes meltdowns and a clash of each others needs!!

So we need to rename this “neum” period! Maybe to “watch out the crash out is coming neum” or “lock the doors, tell everyone to p**s off neum”

Anyone else have around 48 hours of intense irritability, come down, tears, unable to move from bed or sofa, extreme demand avoidance, exhaustion and grinchness?

Ahhhh that’s what we can call is

“Grinchneum”!!!!

Thank you Tom Read Wilson for the inspiration! X

28/12/2025

Today I hate myself for how hard I find this.

I did not plan to post this today. I am supposed to be busy having fun, being festive, being grateful. I am sharing it anyway because shame survives in silence, and I cannot be the only one feeling this.

As a child, I was called the miserable one. That label never left. Today, again, I feel like I am that person. The shame of it comes from deep in my body.

But I am not being miserable. I am overwhelmed. I am struggling.

My needs feel invisible today. Not because the people I love are unkind, but because I have spent years being capable, accommodating, holding things together quietly. Maybe I have hidden it too well. So when I falter, it feels like I have broken an unspoken rule.

I cannot cope with the clutter, the visual noise, the lack of space. I cannot cope with the exhaustion that does not lift. I cannot cope with the constant demands layered on top of everything else.

No one sees that.

They just see me not being joyful.

They do not see how much I am holding in, or that this is not a lack of love. It is love. It is what I put myself through because I love them.

I watch my teenagers going about their day and I ache to be the kind of mother who can steady herself simply by knowing they are okay.

But my nervous system does not work like that.

And I hate myself for it.

The shame tells me I should cope better. That other mothers do. That needing care is failure. I know this is trauma and neurodivergence. I know my love for my children is not in question.

But today, I do not have the capacity to offer myself compassion. Today, I am just surviving.

I am sharing this because shame loses its grip when spoken aloud, and because someone else needs to hear they are not broken for finding this hard.

No neat ending. Just honesty.



Supporting JoSoHappy ☕

https://ko-fi.com/josohappy

28/12/2025

Here's another snippet from my and No Pressure PDA's forthcoming book and course

Has anyone else here experienced this?

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Late Sleeping & PDA Teens

Teens naturally sleep later

PDA teens are also prone to:

– sleep demands triggering avoidance

– circadian sleep disorders

Forcing earlier sleep rarely works

Sleep deprivation harms learning, safety, mental health & self-regulation

Harm can be minimized by accomodating their late sleep schedule

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Our website: https://pda-insiders.com