"My Mighty Quinn" - From Tics, Turbulence, Distraction and Disconnection to Calm, Confident and Connected"

S3 Episode 4: Inside the World of a Neuro-Development Specialist with AnneMarie Smellie

• Lucia Silver / Anne-Marie Smellie • Season 3 • Episode 4

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Welcome to My Mighty Quinn!
I’m your host, Lucia Silver, founder of the Brain Health Movement and proud mother of the Mighty Quinn. In today’s episode, I’m joined by the incredible Anne Marie Smellie, a neurodevelopmental specialist with over 20 years of experience helping children and families uncover the root causes of developmental, learning, and behavioral challenges.

Episode Summary

We dive into the critical gaps in conventional healthcare when addressing symptoms like anxiety, ADHD, autism, sensory sensitivities, and more. Anne Marie shares her holistic approach, integrating retained primitive reflex therapy, auditory processing interventions, nutrition, and emotional support to transform lives. You’ll learn how understanding the “why” behind symptoms can unlock powerful tools to help your child thrive.

Top Takeaways:

  1. Root Cause Focus: Addressing retained primitive reflexes, auditory sensitivities, and nutritional deficiencies is key to effective interventions.
  2. Collaboration is Key: Parents play a central role in implementing home strategies like reflex integration exercises and dietary changes.
  3. The Role of Play: Activities like tag or climbing are essential for integrating reflexes and building core strength.
  4. Empathy Without Overwhelm: Teach children to balance caring for others without absorbing their emotions.
  5. Auditory Processing Matters: Addressing how the brain interprets sound can significantly impact learning and behavior.

Resources for Parents:

  • Learn more about Anne Marie Smellie: Quester Therapies Website
  • Free Resource Download: Access Anne Marie’s curated list of flower remedies for emotional stability and anxiety support in our cheat sheet here.
  • Recommended Reading:
    • Hearing Equals Behavior by Dr. Guy Berard
    • The Well-Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart-Smith

Get Involved:

If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend who might need it. Don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. 

Visit our website for your free cheat sheet and connect with Anne Marie to explore holistic support for your child’s unique needs. Let’s work together to create a brig

Resource Links:

[00:00:00] Lucia Silver: So welcome to today's episode of My Mighty Quinn. I'm your host, Lucia Silva, the founder of the Brain Health Movement and proud mama of my son, the Mighty Quinn. Today, we're diving into a subject that has left so many parents feeling frustrated. Unheard and stuck when it comes to supporting their children.

[00:00:17] Lucia Silver: Why the conventional healthcare system often falls short for children with developmental, attention, learning and behavioural challenges, which might include symptoms of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety and more. When a child struggles with anxiety, sensory sensitivities, learning delays, tics or behavioural issues, as just some of the examples, most parents turn to their GP for help.

[00:00:42] Lucia Silver: But what happens when there are no clear answers or pathways forward? Often, after waiting what is now almost three years, the outcome wasn't worth waiting for anyway. A diagnosis may be, But what use is this if there's no explanation as to the root cause, or worse still, any meaningful remedial help, other than top level symptom management or medication, which might mask the underlying problem?

[00:01:07] Lucia Silver: And that's where neurodevelopmental specialists like today's guest come in. And I want to give those many parents asking me, What this sort of intervention and help looks like, a window into the world of integrative whole child care and what it really means to address the root causes of your child's symptoms.

[00:01:28] Lucia Silver: Compassionate and qualified practitioner. So I'm thrilled to welcome Anne Marie Smellie to the show. Anne Marie is an incredible practitioner whose holistic and multidisciplinary approach helped children and families uncover the root causes behind these challenges. And with over 20 years of experience, she's a qualified neurodevelopmental practitioner and a barad auditory practitioner.

[00:01:54] Lucia Silver: She's also a curative hypnotherapist and more. Her work integrates everything from retained primitive reflexes to auditory processing therapy, nutrition, kinesiology, and all important emotional support. Anne Marie founded Questa Therapies, where she works with children and adults to address learning, behavioral, and emotional challenges, helping them live healthier, happier lives.

[00:02:20] Lucia Silver: Today, we'll explore what it's really like to see a neurodevelopmental specialist, what makes this approach so different from the conventional dead ends that many parents face, and how integrating all of these skills together Retained primitive reflexes amongst other interventions can transform a child's health, learning and behavior.

[00:02:39] Lucia Silver: So let's get started. Welcome to the show, Annemarie. 

[00:02:43] Anne Marie Smellie: Hi there. Nice to see you. And thanks for the amazing intro. 

[00:02:48] Lucia Silver: Very exciting. It's all your extraordinary accomplishments and so thrilled to have you with us today to shine a spotlight on what really goes on behind closed doors. So thank you very much for joining us.

[00:03:00] Lucia Silver: Perhaps we could start really at the beginning by explaining what a neurodevelopmental specialist is or does and how it differs from the kind of support that parents are typically finding through their GP or school systems. 

[00:03:15] Anne Marie Smellie: Okay a nuero developmental specialist focuses on assessing and treating individuals with developmental, neurological, behavioral, or even, and cognitive challenges.

[00:03:27] Anne Marie Smellie: These specialists often work with children and adults who experience delays or difficulties in areas such as motor skills, communication, learning, behavior, and social interaction. And people, their expertise lies in understanding how the brain and nervous system works to influence the development and functioning of these systems, and use evidence based interventions to support these individuals in achieving their full potential.

[00:03:55] Anne Marie Smellie: We use diagnostic tools that go beyond the screening or Observational methods used by GPs or social school psychologists. And beyond what a school looks at, we're looking at the foundations, what is going on, why these people have got problems in the first place.

[00:04:12] Lucia Silver: So it really is a lens looking at the why rather than necessarily what is presenting, what is causing this presentation? 

[00:04:22] Anne Marie Smellie: Yeah, absolutely. Because there've been many different Aspects, looking at it. And so I bring in different areas because it's never just one thing.

[00:04:32] Lucia Silver: , Indeed. So one of the most fascinating parts of your work focuses on retained primitive reflexes, which is at the core of our focus at the brain health movement as well.

[00:04:44] Lucia Silver: Can you talk us through from your point of view, what they are for anyone listening for the first time today and why this, why they sometimes don't integrate properly and in turn, how this impacts a child's development? 

[00:04:58] Anne Marie Smellie: The impact of retained primitive reflexes can often be overlooked by GPs and schools because of limited awareness.

[00:05:05] Anne Marie Smellie: They have overlapping symptoms with more common conditions at times. And they focus on the immediate symptoms rather than developmental root causes. And what I'm looking at are the foundations, what's going on underneath. Greater education about these reflexes, which you're doing, and a more holistic approach to assessing and supporting children's developmental needs could lead to earlier recognition and more effective interventions.

[00:05:30] Anne Marie Smellie: Now, primitive reflexes, they're there for a reason. They teach the body and brain to connect, and they create all these different neural connections. They start in the womb, and they should be integrated into the central nervous system by about a year old. But for whatever reasons, there can be all sorts of different reasons they're not integrated.

[00:05:49] Anne Marie Smellie: Now, it can be because there may be stress when they're When the mother was pregnant or maybe she had hyperemesis it might be because the was, there was a C section birth and then they need stimulation to actually integrate. And with a C section that has been pulled out as such they might be because there's been a traumatic birth or a too slow birth or even too quick a birth.

[00:06:13] Anne Marie Smellie: There's no true definitive reason why they're not integrated properly, but they can create all sorts of blockages. And they can create so the Moro reflex is one of the first ones. It's when a baby's first born, it throws out its hands when it's when it's stimulated in this way, what it does, it's it's there for a reason to kickstart the the heart, the breathing system, but it can create, if it's not integrated, a real fight or flight systems and overwhelm leading to lots of anxiety.

[00:06:45] Anne Marie Smellie: And then there's the one of the other ones, the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex directly affects the ability to cross to, for both hemispheres of the brain to work together properly. And they can create problems of reading and writing. And so these reflexes not only affect a learning, they affect behavior, they affect the way that you interact with life and people.

[00:07:09] Lucia Silver: And just looking back at how general practice, our GPs or our healthcare nurses handle this, as you rightly say, if you mentioned primitive reflexes, the majority of the establishment don't really know what they are or vaguely remember touchstones of it in their medical education. But, Perhaps more worryingly, we get visited, don't we?

[00:07:34] Lucia Silver: After we have our babies at home in the UK, we get visited by a healthcare nurse. This is what I remember. And actually they are supposed to check the moro reflex that the your children's central nervous system is responding appropriately, but much more relevantly, they don't come back and check that it's stopped being there anymore.

[00:07:52] Lucia Silver: Let alone, as you've said, the roster of other primitive reflexes. In the first instance, as a neurodevelopmental specialist, you offer a really important viewpoint into, what is the state of this child's nervous systems preventatively. And if you're seeing a child in that first year of life, you can start to check for whether those primitive reflexes have actually integrated.

[00:08:15] Lucia Silver: Whereas when you go to see your pediatrician, which frankly we don't, unless there's a problem, we don't go and visit them. Unless something's gone wrong with our little ones. Your role is really very central. There's no other discipline really within, other than maybe certain occupational therapists, who a mother could take their baby to, to check that central nervous system development is actually doing what it's supposed to.

[00:08:42] Lucia Silver: It's really important role that you have in, at that stage in life, let alone when we're seeing behavioral and other symptoms presenting later on in the classroom, because those primitive reflexes are still active. What are some of the most common symptoms in children with retained reflexes, Anne Marie?

[00:09:01] Anne Marie Smellie: Difficulty of reading, writing, balance, coordination. And I tell you what happens a lot anxiety, but lack of confidence and self esteem is a big one. And that's where I'm most concerned about because, that affects us in later life. And with my hypnotherapy hat on I've seen this in people how, when they've had these things in the beginning that have created these beliefs and opinions about themselves that they're not good enough.

[00:09:27] Anne Marie Smellie: They don't know why they're not good enough. They don't know why they're not as good as their peers, why they're having difficulty and someone else isn't. And they start to create this sort of program inside themselves that they're not good enough. And to me, that's one of the most important things to do.

[00:09:41] Anne Marie Smellie: And funny enough, I had A boy I just saw recently teenage boy, 17, actually. He was he was struggling in in college in school struggling, and then he was out of, there was a gap between school and when he was starting college. And he was learning to drive, had a girlfriend, he felt free.

[00:09:59] Anne Marie Smellie: And and then suddenly he started college again and suddenly his whole Behavior turned, and he actually even called himself a bit of a turd because of the way he was actually behaving at home. And when I, just from chatting to him, I realized that actually he had been struggling at school, but no one picked up that he had these reflexes in existence.

[00:10:19] Anne Marie Smellie: When I tested him, he had been typical moral reflexes. He put pressure on himself. He put, was a perfectionist. It was a fear of change and all these different things. When he was at school, he felt trapped in this, but when he was then free and with that gap at all, before college, he felt, started to feel good about himself doing things.

[00:10:38] Anne Marie Smellie: But as soon as college started again, it reminded him how bad, how he felt about himself and how he couldn't do certain aspects.

[00:10:47] Lucia Silver: So college is functioning as a trigger, an anxiety point, or perhaps a trauma connection somewhere there that keeps reigniting the moro reflex, or is preventing it from becoming retained, would you say?

[00:10:59] Lucia Silver: Or integrated? 

[00:11:00] Anne Marie Smellie: It was more the fact that it was a reminder how he felt trapped at school and not good enough, and then back at college again. You felt trapped again and not good enough. And and this is quite sort of a common thing because they don't understand what is going on. And it's not sometimes until, there's a lot of these problems don't get shown up until when the pressure starts going on at school.

[00:11:23] Anne Marie Smellie: And that's when parents or teachers start saying what is going on? Suddenly that child is getting very overwhelmed. Because it's just the pressure's too much. And by the way, with these reflexes, then even if they get integrated into the central nervous system, what happens is they go dormant.

[00:11:40] Anne Marie Smellie: They don't disappear. They're dormant. But if there's a physical or emotional trauma, they can come out again. Okay. Covid, for some people, has created, it's brought them out again.

[00:11:54] Lucia Silver: I think that's a very important part to understand because I've had some parents say to me, I know what the problem is now, the problem is primitive reflexes. They're not really the problem per se, they are, as you've said Anne Marie, they're supposed to be there, they're a barometer of the status quo of the nervous system, they give you an indication of what is happening within the nervous system, and they do need to be integrated at appropriate moments in those milestones of childhood development, but they do also exist in order to keep us alive.

[00:12:23] Lucia Silver: Our moro reflex, that startle reflex, is what allows us to be alarmed and protect ourselves and increase our heartbeat and release hormones. which we need to for our survival. But what we don't want to see is that a child in a classroom, like this young lad and so many kids today, the minute the lights go on in the classroom or the door closes or a chair scrapes, they're startled in the middle of the classroom experience.

[00:12:49] Lucia Silver: That's not a purposeful, helpful response. That's a very hypervigilant fight or flight nervous system, isn't it? And that then has this knock on effect on, as you're saying, their anxiety, their sense of self worth. their ability to self regulate and indeed fatigue. I saw with Quinn just such fatigue at the end of a day when you're managing that level of adrenaline, is that adrenaline, Anne Marie? It's a lot for the body to contend with, isn't it? 

[00:13:16] Anne Marie Smellie: Part of the thing is with these primitive reflexes, they can find it very difficult to sit up, to sit on a chair properly, to support themselves, okay? That time spent in the classroom when they're having to really try and hold themselves better, it, that creates fatigue, but also Every sense, especially of the mora, is on heightened alert.

[00:13:35] Anne Marie Smellie: There's too much information coming in. And so how on earth are you supposed to focus and concentrate when you've got just too much? Even the memory can be affected as well.

[00:13:45] Lucia Silver: I loved an early analogy of, if it was back in the sort of animal kingdom, when we were out hunting and gathering, it's almost like expecting a child to concentrate in the classroom when a lion's sitting there.

[00:13:56] Lucia Silver: It's the same, so they're in that level of hypervigilance and you're going, excuse me, algebra, I know what I'd be concentrating on. 

[00:14:04] Anne Marie Smellie: , but not only with the intellectual part of the learning. In school, there's so much more going on. There's all the different personalities that are going on at school.

[00:14:15] Anne Marie Smellie: So this is a lot for them to cope with as well. And say the TLR reflex, the tonic labyrinthine reflex, makes it very difficult to understand spatial awareness. So when you're interacting with other people, other children, that can be difficult at times.

[00:14:32] Lucia Silver: I I read a recent piece of research ri if you came across the same way. That's that that as the result of a lot of these in reflexes, not integrating that spatial awareness, but also the aggressive, the aggression that is surfacing because of moro reflex and disproportionate emotional regulation means that schools are banning tag, which is a really important game for kids to play, for social engagement, for proprioception, for spatial, for eyeball cord, for all of.

[00:14:59] Lucia Silver: The whole roster of milestone developments. We need to play tag in the playground, but because the children have got so dysregulated, they're they're falling over more, they're hurting one another, they're getting aggressive, they're having meltdowns and school's just gone, ban tag, whereas it's a developmental issue, isn't it?

[00:15:17] Lucia Silver: That's a good example 

[00:15:18] Lucia Silver: of one. 

[00:15:19] Anne Marie Smellie: Absolutely. Another thing we look at, I look at because primitive reflexes, they affect the way the eyes track and also with balance, but also they can in, they can stop the postural reflexes, which are ones we want to have in existence, being there. And one of the ones is the head writing reflex.

[00:15:37] Anne Marie Smellie: Now you just said about falling over. So the head writing reflex, it's very much of the eyes looking forward. They should be able to naturally. move, but keep their eyes level. But a lot of people, they've got their head right and reflex not in position properly. When they're so good to the side, their head is going along with them to the side.

[00:15:55] Anne Marie Smellie: And therefore they're, let's say you're catching a ball or something, you're falling over because you're not balancing.

[00:16:02] Lucia Silver: It's quite extraordinary to think of that, that the American Postural Institute shared another piece of research, a really good one, a real. quantitative piece of research of 600, 000 children in primary school who more than half of them didn't have balance and were falling off their chairs. That is, you see that level versus two generations previously, they didn't have the same group size, but there just weren't these issues.

[00:16:30] Lucia Silver: Teachers are saying children are falling off their chairs. falling off their chairs. They're clumsier. And that's a lot to do with those postural reflexes, core strength, balance, and the vestibular development, isn't it? That's all part of what you're talking about. 

[00:16:44] Anne Marie Smellie: Absolutely. And I think we tend to over protect our children.

[00:16:47] Anne Marie Smellie: I remember climbing trees and doing things which we are much more physical in many ways. And therefore we developed more strength and ability to, we are naturalists. Funny enough, integrating these reflexes by what we were doing.

[00:17:03] Lucia Silver: Yep. Naturally playing in nature, tumbling, hanging upside down, crashing, all of that and that's one of the primary drivers why if parents are listening now and thinking Lucia, Anne Marie, come on we, primitive reflexes always existed, so why is there more of a problem now?

[00:17:21] Lucia Silver: Anne Marie's listed a number of them. We intervene a lot more with the birth, the natural birthing. We, we don't move as much. We've introduced screens to children as young as two, sometimes earlier. So all the natural ways that these milestones would be met and the brain would start to inhibit these reflexes and postural reflexes would come into play and balance would come into play.

[00:17:45] Lucia Silver: That's not happening because we are not living the way that we used to. Which is why your whole area is so critical that parents understand there is someone you can go and talk to and understand what needs to be happening at different stages. So that's one really golden pot, Anne Marie, in your in your sort of armory of tools and alchemy.

[00:18:06] Lucia Silver: There's auditory processing, which is another very strong area, rewiring the brain through sound. There are obviously different protocols for auditory or sound therapy. There's SSP, there's Tomatis, Johansson and more. You are a broad auditory practitioner and it would be Fantastic to understand what role auditory processing plays in a child's development and how these programs help improve, again, some of these challenges we've mentioned, the sensory processing and dysregulation, anxiety, focus, and so forth.

[00:18:39] Anne Marie Smellie: Auditory processing plays a critical role in child's development. It involves the brain's ability to interpret, process, and respond to sounds, including language and environmental noises. And efficient auditory processing allows a child to understand spoken language, follow directions, distinguish between different sounds, main attention in various settings.

[00:19:00] Anne Marie Smellie: And if it's not working properly, it can also affect emotional regulation. And so it's, it can create problems like sensory processing difficulties, dysregulated behaviors, anxiety, and focus problems. I use Barad integration training. It's just a 10 day program, so it's easy to do, I feel.

[00:19:22] Anne Marie Smellie: So auditory processing can affect many different areas because how can someone explain how they're hearing? Someone can't explain if they've got hypersensitive hearing or not, or distortions or something called dislaterality, where there's a time lag effect from certain phonemes getting across to the language processing center of the brain.

[00:19:42] Anne Marie Smellie: But all these things can be ordered, can be helped with these different processes.

[00:19:47] Lucia Silver: And How do they help? What is the process and what does it look like? First of all, how would you identify that a child had auditory processing challenges? 

[00:19:56] Anne Marie Smellie: What I do is, first of all, I'm talking to the parent normally about different questions about whether they if they're having to repeat themselves to get the child to listen, whether that person, that child seems sensitive to certain noises.

[00:20:08] Anne Marie Smellie: Or they're avoiding certain situations, things like that. Maybe it's it's actually going to impact reading as well, because we do, it's the language, what we're dealing with, it's what we read in our heads, first of all, funny enough. And the, I do an audiogram and from that audiogram, I can see whether that child, it's not testing if that child hears, but. How they hear. So I'm testing, looking to see if they've got hypersensitive hearing, whether there's distortions between different frequencies, different phonemes and whether there's something, as I mentioned, dis laterality and that's done by a bone conduction test. And within an audiogram, funny enough you can, I can tell whether someone's got anxiety or negative patterns of thinking through the way the audiogram looks.

[00:20:57] Anne Marie Smellie: Now, I know that sounds a bit strange, but this there's a book called Hearing equals behavior by Dr. Gibrard, who explains all his research on this. And it's fascinating because I went to school and tested all sorts of different children. I hadn't seen any background, but I just did their audiograms.

[00:21:13] Anne Marie Smellie: And from these audiograms, I was able to Match up totally what their background was, whether they had a negative pattern of thinking, whether it was anger or not. And it was really interesting to see how it's totally matched up. And if you think about it, the your inner ear is right next door to your vestibular system.

[00:21:29] Anne Marie Smellie: Okay. So it affects the emotions and it also can affect balance. So funny enough, somebody who's had difficulty with their balance can be helped with auditory programming.

[00:21:40] Lucia Silver: And when you say it's not about hearing, I think that's really critical that we understand that. That's a whole different thing, how well you hear. It's how you are receiving the sound. And we have done some work with a practitioner in ADHD who works for charity specifically, horrifyingly, Anne Marie, called the School to prison pipeline for kids with ADHD and this correlation that we're seeing.

[00:22:06] Lucia Silver: But interestingly, some tests were done on hearing, most importantly, on auditory processing. And when these tests were done, they were able to see that what a lot of these teenagers, young adults were hearing was auditory. Aggression. They only heard aggression. So there's an example, you can, the way that you interpret sound is everything, isn't it?

[00:22:31] Lucia Silver: Whether the world feels safe or not, whether the world feels like it's aggressing you or not, and to learn as a lot of these sound therapies do, the way we speak to a 

[00:22:40] Lucia Silver: little baby or the way we speak to a pet has a certain timbre, certain rhythms, certain gentleness, and it's.

[00:22:48] Lucia Silver: That is part of also, as I understand it, the way the sound therapy works to calm the nervous system. So talk to us a little bit about how audiotherapy helps your patients, how it calms the nervous system, if that's what you need it to do. 

[00:23:02] Anne Marie Smellie: If they've got hypersensitive hearing, we can bring that down so that also sometimes they can have peaks in their hearing.

[00:23:09] Anne Marie Smellie: Now, if you've got a peak in hearing, that can make it much more oof to hear certain frequencies. funny enough. Sometimes. The frequency of a mother's voice can be quite irritating to some children because they might have that peak of that that area. And so that, that child might block it out because it's just too annoying to them.

[00:23:30] Anne Marie Smellie: And so with the archaeotherapy, we're working to bring down the hypersensitive hearing to try and flatten out those distortions. And also then work on the dislaterality itself, so they become middle to right ear dominant. So the sound, the sounds go straight to language processing center without a delay.

[00:23:52] Lucia Silver: And this is why we see sometimes, Anne Marie, the problem with multiple instructions with children. I do see it sometimes with Quinn. I think it could also be that he's an 11 year old boy. Doesn't want to go upstairs, tidy his room, pick up his stuff and come back down again and forgets rather conveniently, but those multiple instructions are in the classroom.

[00:24:10] Lucia Silver: Pick up your pens, head over to the classroom and go down to lunch, get the green bag and come back up again. Inevitably, half the classroom seems to arrive with two out of three. That's the sort of processing that you're talking about as well? 

[00:24:24] Anne Marie Smellie: Yes. What, we see it because the brain is having to process it.

[00:24:27] Anne Marie Smellie: So it's hearing, if it's not hearing it clearly, it's taking some time. And so if you're trying to work out what you've heard properly, you're not going to be picking up, say the second or third instruction.

[00:24:39] Lucia Silver: And then that has an impact on working memory as well, doesn't it? Retaining that information and then being able to.

[00:24:46] Lucia Silver: unpack it and use it as in reading comprehensions or that sort of thing as well. 

[00:24:50] Anne Marie Smellie: Yes, and also say if a teacher is teaching class and they're they're talking to you, you might not be hearing all of that, not picking up all the information.

[00:24:59] Lucia Silver: Yeah, nothing worse than getting half of it and then getting lost. So that's something that patients can access with you when they come and see you, you can do a diagnostic of sorts around audio processing, and then you have some equipment that you can work with that can help remediate some of those areas.

[00:25:22] Anne Marie Smellie: Yes. When clients come to see me I always, parents or adults very much yes, I'm assessing, but also I'm addressing it. I'm, there's something we can do, not just giving you a diagnosis, whatever, it's to say you've got this, but there is a program that you can do to help with that.

[00:25:38] Lucia Silver: Fantastic. So looking now into your next little, I feel like I'm Diving into your little pot of goodies. Next one. This one is I've framed it kinesiology, nutrition, and gut health. The sort of the mind body connection, huge arguments about, is it the brain leading the gut? Is it the gut leading the brain?

[00:25:56] Lucia Silver: Is it the brain? It's, I'm just, I've nutted out now having spoken to hundreds of experts, it's both, clearly incredibly important to understand. this area. And you use kinesiology as a sort of an accelerator, really, to identify where some of the problems may be, because there is a lot of detective work involved in understanding What can be comorbid?

[00:26:22] Lucia Silver: Conditions that are impacting on one another. Chicken and egg, if we resolve that, does it take away, if we resolve A, does it take away B? Or do we need to do both A and B at the same time? How important is sequencing and so forth? So there is quite a conundrum of elements that we need to look at and understand.

[00:26:42] Lucia Silver: How to approach, and I think you, you really use kinesiology to uncover hidden stresses or blockages in the body and then how this relates to the symptoms of anxiety and focus issues or whatever it is we might be seeing, but. I just wanted to say before I ask you this question, metabolic health is key to our children doing well.

[00:27:03] Lucia Silver: The brain needs energy, and if we're not, for whatever reasons, producing energy efficiently, this can be a huge obstacle to the brain getting what it needs, can't it? So you're this functional medical area, the health of the gut, steering everything else. If you're not, if you're not actually producing energy efficiently, how can you concentrate?

[00:27:25] Lucia Silver: If you're not breathing properly, you're going to feel anxious. It's all these different components, isn't it? Impacting one on one on the other. So please talk to us about how you navigate that so brilliantly and how you're using kinesiology with gut health and so forth. 

[00:27:41] Anne Marie Smellie: Oh when I first learned kinesiology, I thought it was this.

[00:27:44] Anne Marie Smellie: So I realized it's this, there's so much that can be used for it. It's really the body has an innate intelligence and it's tapping into it. And many osteopaths and chiropractors use kinesiology in their practices these days. And it's been around for many years. So it's through muscle testing and you can detect sensitivity to certain food.

[00:28:05] Anne Marie Smellie: You can identify deficiencies in essential nutrients and uncover presence of toxins that might affect overall health, but also stress. And I'm stress is a big thing. And my mindset as well. So I had just bringing it back to primitive reflexes briefly. I had a child, she had global delay and she'd been to see all sorts of different practitioners.

[00:28:25] Anne Marie Smellie: Nothing was making that it was coming back to ground zero again. And now she has a very. Obstinate character. He's stubborn. And what's happening is actually because of this stubbornness and obstinate character, her body was holding on to this mora more, which is holding on to everything as a protection because that's what the mora is about.

[00:28:46] Anne Marie Smellie: It's a primal reflex. So I had to work on The mindset and de stressing her before I could even start on actually dealing with the actual reflexes themselves. And so using certain techni kinesiology techniques and other sort of methods I had could work, break that down to see what was going on.

[00:29:06] Anne Marie Smellie: And then we were able to actually integrate those reflexes properly. So this is why kinesiology is so brilliant that you can tap into things. It's also, especially like toxicity. It's such a big thing and I've, it's amazing. I found so many people now, children, adults, of course, they're coming to me for, because they've got a problem.

[00:29:25] Anne Marie Smellie: But I found that they've got candida. Now people, when they're testing, if you go to a doctor, they're testing, it's usually in the mouth or the gut or the vagina, but I'm finding it in the brain and when it's in the brain, it can create brain fog panic attacks, anxiety, and also I find many menopausal women have this candida in their brain.

[00:29:46] Anne Marie Smellie: And it's a fungal overgrowth. And there seems to be so much more of it these days. Sometimes, candida loves sugar. That could be part of the reason. But also when the body has too much metal toxicity in it, it uses this fungal overgrowth candida to wrap around it to protect it.

[00:30:03] Anne Marie Smellie: The trouble is, that protection for the metals is toxicity is actually creating other issues. So through different kinesiology techniques that I use an advanced one called PRANA, Polarity Reflex Analysis Nutritional Assessment. This has been amazing about how to see, I can tell where the toxicity is within that body and also what is the best thing to treat it, but also, as you mentioned before, what is the priority to treat?

[00:30:30] Anne Marie Smellie: Because you've got to do it in the way that the body is going to accept it. If you're rushing it, it's not going to accept it or block. So it's really working on many different areas just to see. So it's just the, it's a feedback from the body is like, what does this particular person's body need?

[00:30:47] Anne Marie Smellie: Because we're all unique.

[00:30:50] Lucia Silver: I have no idea how you know which bit of magic to pull out of your box. There's just so many things to look at, aren't there? It feels like kinesiology has given you a great navigation tool as to where to begin, but you see a child that's deeply dysregulated. Do you start with audio?

[00:31:09] Lucia Silver: Processing. Do you start with calming, simply calming the nervous system? Do you start with mindset? Do you start with primitive reflex integration? Do you look at their diet and allergies? It's there's a lot isn't there? There's a lot to consider. 

[00:31:23] Anne Marie Smellie: So when a person comes to me for an assessment You know, I tend to do I do an audiogram first of all, to see what's going on with that area.

[00:31:33] Anne Marie Smellie: Then I do a neurodevelopmental assessment, looking at the primitive reflexes, the postural reflexes and the eye tracking. And then I do the kinesiology, the more nutrition toxicity. But when I'm doing that, I'm also, I do, while they're there, I may as well, I do a bit of de stressing of their bodies straight away.

[00:31:51] Anne Marie Smellie: So I'm already doing a bit of work on them because they're with me. Why not? Why wouldn't I? And each time, so if somebody is doing a program of me, of neurodevelopmental exercises, when they come in, every time when they come in for a review, I'm I de stress them again, because we're made up of layers of stress.

[00:32:08] Anne Marie Smellie: As adults, we say, Oh, I'm with stress, but also children are. Children hold on to a lot of stress. Okay. And it can be, it's funny with the with my hypnotherapy background is that when I'm. Treating people with hypnotherapy that an instant will come up and there's somebody might laugh and say, is that it?

[00:32:24] Anne Marie Smellie: Was that the problem? A lot of it being at school, someone might've said or done. I say, yes, that was important. That was so important at that time. It's not to be dismissed that hurt, that affected you emotionally. And so it's about looking at those layers. So children do have stress as well.

[00:32:40] Lucia Silver: Yes. And trauma is I would call that, trauma. If I think sometimes we think that something. like Syria has to happen in our life for it to be a trauma, but actually it's the way that the body responded to that given event, isn't it? And how that stressor has been stored within the body.

[00:32:57] Lucia Silver: And my sense is that you would pick up on that if that is a big factor. The number of teenagers, for example, Anne Marie, that I hear about from parents saying, I just can't get my teenager to go into school because there's so much anxiety around. It's a, sometimes it is a trigger relating to.

[00:33:13] Lucia Silver: completion of work, or something has happened there that has heightened the nervous system. Yes, it could be some food. It could be exacerbated by food. It could be exacerbated by, as you say, auditory processing. But the body, is understanding, the bottom line is, the body is understanding it's unsafe.

[00:33:32] Lucia Silver: So our first premise, however we do that, seems to be, and I remember in a conversation with the wonderful Stephen Borges who's coming on board with us on the Brain Health Movement soon on our podcast, he said, I call it the safe and sound protocol, but there is, there really is no, you can't be sound if you're not feeling safe.

[00:33:52] Lucia Silver: You can't, safe is the premise of everything. So I imagine that's where you're starting Anne Marie, isn't it? Is how can I make this little person or bigger person feel safe in order that we can access the remedial benefits of your goodie bag of treatments and so forth? 

[00:34:12] Anne Marie Smellie: Yeah. And I wanted to talk about something about empathy.

[00:34:16] Anne Marie Smellie: So a lot of people will say, parents will say, Oh, my child's so empathetic. It's marvelous. But the trouble is what's happening a lot of the time, they're picking up on other people's emotions as well. Not just their own, but other people's. Or say if they watch the news, they're getting into people's emotions or imagining they must be feeling this.

[00:34:36] Anne Marie Smellie: They must be feeling that. And then they start feeling them themselves. And this can be part of the overwhelm. So I have to teach a lot of these children to, sounds a bit bad, but it's Back off. Don't get into other people's emotions. That's not your job. Sometimes they're over caring about their parents.

[00:34:52] Anne Marie Smellie: They're worrying about what's going on in the home environment. And they're taking on sometimes responsibilities for other people's emotions. So this can be part of the whole this is why it's so important to talk to these children, to understand what's going on. 

[00:35:07] Lucia Silver: And to talk to their parents as well.

[00:35:09] Lucia Silver: Our sentence keeps getting longer. We talk about the whole child, multidisciplinary root cause. And I go back again, I go whole child, whole family, multidisciplinary, because they are inextricably connected. And as ever, I am led by my mighty Quinn with his extraordinary innate wisdom. When just the other day I was fussing over something.

[00:35:32] Lucia Silver: With him worrying, a projection of my own anxiety. Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? I don't know how many times I asked him, are you okay? Clearly in an anxious state myself. And he said, yes, mummy, but you're clearly not. It was just brilliant. It was, I thought it was, my nervous system was supposed to be lending regulation to his and I'm supposed to be mirroring back that this divine piece of wisdom that I have the great gift to live with is reflecting back at me.

[00:36:03] Lucia Silver: I'm absolutely fine. Basically back off. I'm doing fine. You go and sort, you go and have a bath and relax. You go and do what you need to do. I'm absolutely fine in this moment. So it's a lesson to us all there. 

[00:36:16] Anne Marie Smellie: Absolutely. 

[00:36:18] Lucia Silver: So Anne Marie, you've talked about candida, yeast overgrowth that's metabolic infections, if you like, from the metabolic side of nutrition, how do you use, how do you use nutrition to support children with some of the symptoms of, again, ADHD, anxiety, and other challenges? What's your approach there?

[00:36:36] Anne Marie Smellie: First of all, it's about looking at the imbalance because say if they've had a good diet. Why aren't they absorbing the vitamins and minerals, like other people, what's going on? And sometimes it is due to stress, or it can be some other imbalance that's going on that we can help with. And also looking to see, testing other things, gluten and dairy, oh my goodness, that can have such an impact on children.

[00:37:01] Anne Marie Smellie: I've seen a difference when you've taken them off it, how the whole behavior can change. It's like an opioid to the brain. It crosses over the blood brain barrier and makes them hyper. And this can be part of the system, some reasons behind ADHD. They might also have something called, which is, this is more extreme, something called pyrrole disorder or cryptopyrrolia, and that creates extreme reactions and and that can be either tested by a doctor for a urine test more.

[00:37:31] Anne Marie Smellie: People like Lucinda Miller, I know that you deal with her. They do those sort of tests. I can test it out myself as well briefly. And it's just, what that does it drains the zinc and the vitamin B6 mostly from the actual system. And we need these minerals, these vitamins to connect connections to the brain.

[00:37:50] Anne Marie Smellie: And if they're not in place, there can be disruption. And cause anxiety, ADHD symptoms and all sorts of other things like that. 

[00:37:59] Lucia Silver: So again, another important first premise, isn't it? I remember Dr. Josh saying to me, the number of kids that present at his clinic in the States who are so called ADHD, that, the massive amount of diagnosis going on over there.

[00:38:14] Lucia Silver: And he'll start with, have you done any iron tests? Have you done any, really perfunctory, basic testing? And then he finds a huge swathe of these children are iron deficient just as a first premise. And sometimes when that deficiency alone is addressed, They don't present with the symptoms anymore.

[00:38:33] Lucia Silver: So it just shows the importance of what you've just said, really. And you also use, so there's the nutritional side, so you're checking for imbalances or intolerances or deficiencies there. How are you using your herbal and flower remedies to assist this healing process because you don't advocate, I know you say there's a place and a time for drugs, for pharmaceutical drugs but that's obviously not your approach and it's not our first approach either.

[00:39:01] Lucia Silver: At all costs, we try to approach things as naturally as possible, facilitating the body to, to heal. As naturally as possible as nature intended. So talk to us about herbal and flower remedies. 

[00:39:14] Anne Marie Smellie: Flower remedies have been around for centuries before even drugs were were around people use them in the olden days to help all sorts of different symptoms.

[00:39:22] Anne Marie Smellie: And we just blocked out that knowledge in many ways. And there are many different types of flower remedies. There's some developed by Dr. Edward Bach and you probably recognize the name rescue remedy, which is sold in The chemists these days, and they're widely used to manage acute stress or anxiety, but there's many different, these remedies can support the emotional wellbeing without any harm to the system and they can work with other sort of medications as well.

[00:39:48] Anne Marie Smellie: And they, it's funny. I had a child once had the permission of the parent to give the child a flower remedy. But a week later they rang me up and said, so what did you give them? His anger's disappeared. He's not angry anymore. And I said, all I did was get this particular flower remedy. And it just helped to calm things down.

[00:40:10] Anne Marie Smellie: And there's many different ones. And part of, I know it's going to give people A PDF about different ones that can help for different emotional status. That you, I think you'd be able to give people out. And they're just, they can just help in such a calming way.

[00:40:25] Anne Marie Smellie: And I use them on my, I use Elm for overwhelm myself. Whenever I'm overwhelmed, I use that. And it just feels like it just, it takes the edge off. So I'm just looking at things that, which might be. It's just, whatever it is, I'm always looking at new ways, new techniques to actually be able to help people.

[00:40:42] Lucia Silver: So if we were looking slightly practically from your point of view, where might you start? What might be a simple change that parents can make at home to support their children's gut health and overall nutritional health? Where might you start after a first appointment if you think that's a critical area?

[00:40:57] Anne Marie Smellie: If gluten and dairy has shown up, I would, say, please just try. Do you know, this is the hardest one for parents to accept all of the time. They tend to resist taking it out. I said, please just try taking it out for a few weeks and to see if there is a difference, so you can see the difference.

[00:41:12] Anne Marie Smellie: And also just if they're growing, they'll need more zinc. Because zinc is such a necessary mineral for so many, so many aspects of our growth. And like a good diet and overall diet, but just like assessing where that child is more reactive on certain things, making sure they're hydrated Sometimes they're dehydrated and that can affect mood as well. But looking at sort of the sugar, the impact, the processed food. Yeah, I had two girls once I was treating of an intensive program and I saw them in the morning. And, oh they're such lovely little girls. And in the afternoon, they were like wild animals bouncing off the walls.

[00:41:52] Anne Marie Smellie: I couldn't understand what had happened. And I said what have you eaten? What have you done since I last saw you? And school, as a sort of a reward, had given out all these blue ice lollies. The difference was intense. Avoid food colorings, avoid preservatives wherever you can. They have an impact.

[00:42:10] Lucia Silver: Yeah, the colors tell you something, don't they? If it didn't occur, that color in nature, then maybe it's not a good idea to eat it. I always think that's quite a good guideline. Nothing was ever produced luminously by nature, was it? Not to eat, anyway. Usually they're colored that way.

[00:42:26] Lucia Silver: They're telling you not to eat me. Emotional support and hypnotherapy. You allude to this quite a lot. I've heard you talking a lot about stubborn natures or mindset and how critical that is in the portfolio of rehabilitation. How are you using hypnotherapy and mindset techniques to help children who are feeling stuck or overwhelmed? 

[00:42:51] Anne Marie Smellie: I don't normally use hypnotherapy on children until they're about sort of 12, 13, 14, around that, because it's a bit too much for them. It's very gentle, but they might be nervous about it. But I use through kinesiology testing, I can find out through the mindset, just it's the reactions to certain muscle testing, to certain reaction, things I say, sometimes I do.

[00:43:13] Anne Marie Smellie: And it just opens up a conversation and I have conversations with them about their levels, where they're feeling, what's it, and also just giving them some tools. And with the 20 odd years experience of hypnotherapy, I've got lots of tools I can help their mindset and It's teaching them how to use their mind.

[00:43:29] Anne Marie Smellie: Say if someone's behaved nastily at school, it's about how to take the power back so that they're not getting affected by it. But it's having sort of practical ways that they can use to help themselves.

[00:43:42] Lucia Silver: Yes. There's a lot to be said for where you place your attention, in, in life, where you put your focus. And I think being able to help At a deeper level, sometimes we get into, we're trapped into particular ways of thinking and particular ways of responding. And I imagine with hypnotherapy, you're able to break through some of those sort of shackles that are creating repetitive ideas And maybe even help with neuroception of safe, with safety again being able to help calm the nervous system by speaking at deeper levels to the unconscious mind about safety.

[00:44:17] Lucia Silver: Do you think you can deepen work in that area as well? 

[00:44:21] Anne Marie Smellie: Absolutely. But it's, Looking to see what hypnotherapy the way that I use hypnotherapy, they answer with their fingers. It's called ideomotor response. I've got a better response that way. Cause it's not such a conscious answer that's coming through.

[00:44:35] Anne Marie Smellie: And basically I'm arguing with their subconscious in a nice way. It's just a reset. Their beliefs, their opinions perceptions that they've created over the years. And it can, it doesn't have to be anything large. It can be the smallest bit of information that can cause the most harm. And it's just how they've held it.

[00:44:51] Anne Marie Smellie: And also I use something called called something negative adrenaline. The body and the mind gets addictive to, addicted to adrenaline and it's without you consciously being aware of it. It's looking for it. Okay. As a hell of a lot easier to find something negative to have the adrenaline from than something positive.

[00:45:08] Anne Marie Smellie: So we can even twist things that people say. It's like they meant this really didn't they? It's like a big self harm. It's like a self harm to ourselves. Because what it's doing, it's feeding into this need that this are for the adrenaline. Okay. But most of the time you don't realize you're doing it.

[00:45:23] Anne Marie Smellie: So until it can be pointed out to them, they can actually see what they can do to actually change that behavior. And it's about seeing people in a different life. It's not about the blame game as well. I'm never about the blame game. It's about understanding people around them.

[00:45:38] Anne Marie Smellie: When you understand people and rather than doing the blame game for yourself or other people, you create resilience deep within. And that's so important, resilience.

[00:45:49] Lucia Silver: And to remember as well that with resilience also is the body's desire to naturally heal itself. The body wants to heal. I think a lot of the time these are just lots and lots of obstructions to healing, but

[00:46:00] Lucia Silver: if we can facilitate the body's healing, then we are halfway to understanding in intention as well. I think it's. Yeah, I feel that sometimes we feel like we have to crack on and almost grab the child with the issues and start doing things, but actually nature's way and nature's course is pretty strong.

[00:46:23] Lucia Silver: If we can get out of the way. in a way, if we can remove the obstacles to it. It's a much gentler way of seeing it than the way the Western culture and Western medicine has developed, which is just slam that on it. And that'll get rid of it or put a plaster on that. Then you won't have to deal with it anymore, or, we're just.

[00:46:40] Lucia Silver: trying to, or you are, particularly in your field, just gently exploring with an open and gentle curious mind, what is creating this dysregulation? What is creating this imbalance? It's a very different, very fundamentally different approach to conventional medicine, isn't it? 

[00:46:59] Anne Marie Smellie: Yeah, I'm always about the why.

[00:47:01] Anne Marie Smellie: It started years ago, hypotherapy why has this person got it? What's going on? Where does it come from? Again, with the, why isn't the body working well? Is it primitive reflexes? Is it nutrition? Is it toxicity? Why? But also you've got to have that person, that child to engage with it as well, engage with the process.

[00:47:19] Anne Marie Smellie: So when a child comes in, they can feel a bit like, oh gosh, I've been brought to another place to be tested out again.

[00:47:26] Anne Marie Smellie: And sometimes a parent is taken to so many different places. And sometimes I've had parents come in and say, Oh my God, my child's dyslexic in front of the child. I'm going, Their mind works in a different way. We need people like that. But, it might be a bit of difficulty, the reading and the writing. We can help, yeah, that's 

[00:47:43] Lucia Silver: lovely. Much safer approach. And just finally, Anne Marie, would you give us a, an example or more, if you wish, of a sort of case study? What does it really look like? Share with us, obviously, without revealing anyone's identity, but a child or a teenager who has presented with X and you have employed these.

[00:48:04] Lucia Silver: And this is what we saw as the outcome. It'd be lovely to see it in real human terms.

[00:48:08] Anne Marie Smellie: We had a young girl who was at 14 years of age and she was really struggling emotionally. And she was quite autistic in her sort of thought process, very literal in her thought processes. And she was, just finding school so difficult with social interactions understanding people and and, So we looked at the whole of her because where was there an auditory processing part to it?

[00:48:35] Anne Marie Smellie: And she, she had some distortions. She wasn't really, Processing what people were saying properly. So that was part of the problem that was going on. Her also, gosh her balance was overplaced, but her eyes no wonder she couldn't read properly. They were just bouncing whenever I, when I was testing them.

[00:48:52] Anne Marie Smellie: She just couldn't cross the midline easily. And then she had also some stress in her system and and Candida. So lots of different elements going on there. So we treated the Candida, we treated, did the auditory training and treated the primitive reflexes and only then, once we did that, oh my goodness, suddenly we got to manage the eyes started tracking easier.

[00:49:14] Anne Marie Smellie: She's finding reading so much easier. She was able to put her ideas down onto paper and she wasn't having to Read the paragraph about five times, be able to get the context of it, because she actually, the processing, because all these different aspects had actually improved so much. And therefore she felt better about herself, more confident.

[00:49:34] Anne Marie Smellie: And the parents said Thank you, because she'd been to all sorts of different places before, but actually she enjoyed coming back. She enjoyed the process. And that's part of it, getting to enjoy the process. So otherwise they might fight against it. 

[00:49:47] Lucia Silver: Yeah, the collaborative approach is so important. And another one of the experts that's joined us on the brain health movement is Tami Shamoon, who's the founder and director of the Institute of Child Psychology. And we talked to her a lot about communication and tips and ways to get to know people.

[00:50:04] Lucia Silver: Children of varying ages, because it's different when you're a toddler getting a toddler on board than maybe as you've experienced a 14 year old girl, to really enjoy, if there's resistance, again, that's not going to be helpful. And for some kids, they are stuck in their bedrooms. They don't want to have anything to do with the outside world, let alone another activity with their parents.

[00:50:23] Lucia Silver: And yet, just to emphasize, a lot of the work that you do, Annemarie, does mean, or does It's important that the work is done at home. It can't all be done with you in the clinic. So if you are giving primitive reflex integration exercises or certain dietary changes, obviously those need to be implemented at home.

[00:50:41] Lucia Silver: And that's why we've created our at home course with your guidance and other world leading experts who are feeding in to help us help parents at home. Because this idea of, as you say, dropping your kid off and going, my kid's got this problem, could you fix it? Or as you said with that other parent, my kid's got dyslexia, could you sort it out?

[00:51:01] Lucia Silver: It doesn't happen with the sort of magic wonder pill or a wand that you're going to wave when they come in. This is an ongoing rewiring of the brain and restoring of the gut and rebalancing of the gut rather, all of which happens over a longer period of time at home, doesn't it? You can't do everything in your clinic as much as you'd love to.

[00:51:21] Lucia Silver: You can guide people through the process.

[00:51:23] Anne Marie Smellie: Absolutely, but I, again, it's like working with each family individually as well, what they can do. But, some people, it's working out about their time things and how to work out a schedule for them, a way that they can do it.

[00:51:37] Anne Marie Smellie: Maybe they do a certain amount for some time and then maybe have a break and then they start up again, or maybe they do it all in one go. Each family is different as well. Part of the thing about also about interacting with the parents is about how they listen to the child. Create safe places for the, spaces for them.

[00:51:54] Anne Marie Smellie: And sometimes if they're feeling a bit overwhelmed I tend to say to them like, perhaps you could have a A word that you both understand crocodile, whatever. And when that child says that word, it means that they're overwhelmed, that they're finding this too much, and just back off and give them a bit of space.

[00:52:10] Anne Marie Smellie: Let them re regulate themselves a bit, give them space to do that, and then you can start again. Start into that process.

[00:52:17] Lucia Silver: I think that's what I love so much about your approach, Anne Marie that we just wouldn't see in general practice in in, unfortunately, occasionally we do have immensely compassionate GPs. I'm not saying that they're not, but their medicine is a sort of universal panacea. We deal with this illness this way, we deal with this symptom this way, whereas your approach is really in honour of the individual.

[00:52:41] Lucia Silver: I think that is one of the things, Anne Marie, that I admire so much about your work, that depth of heartfelt compassion that I'm not saying we don't see it with our GPs, but I think they are limited within the protocols of their medical training. Allopathic Western Medicine says we treat this illness with this Approach and we treat this symptom with this medication and actually sitting in front of you is a very multidimensional sensitive human being very finely calibrated Who's dealing with so many composite parts and composite stresses and so forth and your approach Enables all of that to be held and held safely and reviewed and then sequenced in the appropriate order, beginning firstly, and most importantly, with where a child feels safe.

[00:53:34] Lucia Silver: And from there, we can collaboratively, with the respect and compliance of the child, move forwards with their healing. And I think that part is extraordinarily underestimated in the healing journey. So I want to thank you for the work that you do, for your extraordinary breadth and depth of expertise, and for parents to really hear this as hope and support and an extraordinary facility for healing.

[00:54:07] Lucia Silver: for change and transformation. You can find out a lot more about Anne Marie through her website at Cuesta Therapies. We'll be sharing all of those details in the show notes. So thank you for sharing your incredible insights with us today. Your holistic approach to neurodevelopmental support is a game changer for so many families.

[00:54:25] Lucia Silver: And I know our listeners are walking away with a better understanding of what's possible for their children. For our listeners, head over to our website or check the show notes to download. The free cheat sheet we'll create for you with all of the top tips and highlights from today's episode, plus an exclusive list of flower remedies from Anne Marie who's put this together for us, which focuses on emotional stability and support for anxiety.

[00:54:49] Lucia Silver: So you can download that and use it at home to get started. And don't forget to check out Anne Quested Therapies. And remember, if you found this episode helpful, we'd love for you to leave a review, share it with a friend who might need it, and subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes.

[00:55:07] Lucia Silver: Thank you for listening to our world leading experts and the explanations, revelations, and transformations their science and hard work brings to parents and our precious children around the world. Goodbye for today.