S3 Episode 19: Something Is Happening To Our Children - A Conversation Between Lucia Silver & her "Wing-Woman" Connah

Welcome back to My Mighty Quinn

Today’s episode is a little different.

There’s no guest expert, no polished interview and no clinical conversation.

Instead, for the very first time, Lucia is stepping out from behind the interviewer’s chair and into the story herself — joined by BHM’s co-founder and Lucia’s “wing woman”, Connah Edgington, for an honest, raw and deeply personal conversation about how The Brain Health Movement was born.

This is the story behind the movement.
The story behind the Whole Child Healing Roadmap.
And the story behind Quinn.

Together, Lucia and Connah explore the terrifying years when Quinn’s health suddenly unravelled — from severe tics, sensory overwhelm and emotional dysregulation to seizures, panic, intrusive thoughts and the devastating reality of PANS/PANDAS.

But this episode is about far more than one child.

It is about the epidemic unfolding quietly around us.

The rising rates of anxiety, ADHD, autism, school refusal, emotional dysregulation, chronic illness and nervous system collapse in children — and the growing feeling among parents that something deeper is happening beneath the labels and behaviours.

Lucia shares the fear, confusion and isolation of trying to navigate a fragmented medical system while desperately searching for answers no one seemed able to provide.

And perhaps most importantly, she shared the moment that changed everything!

Together, Lucia and Connah explore:

• Quinn’s story — from early signs and tics to seizures, PANS/PANDAS and 
• The nervous system’s role in anxiety, rage, meltdowns, sensory struggles and shutdown
• The concept of “The Perfect Storm” — and how modern childhood may be overloading children’s biology
• How birth trauma, inflammation, processed food, toxins, screens, stress and disconnection may all contribute to neurodevelopmental struggles
• Why behaviour is often a symptom — not the root cause
• The powerful connection between co-regulation, maternal stress and child healing
• What the “cell danger response” and mitochondrial dysfunction really mean in simple human terms
• Why healing requires sequence, safety, nervous system support and understanding
• And how Quinn eventually found his way back to connection, regulation and thriving

This conversation is emotional, hopeful and deeply validating for any parent who has ever felt:

“There has to be more going on here.”

Because perhaps the greatest tragedy is not that our children are struggling.

It’s that we have normalised it.

And perhaps the greatest act of love right now is refusing to stop asking why.

Resources

Free Masterclass "From Burnout to Breakthrough" - Discover the real reasons behind your child’s struggles - and why your nervous system holds the key to your child’s ability to heal.

Transcript

Connah Edgington (00:00)
Welcome back to My Mighty Quinn, a mother's conversations with world leading experts. Today's episode is called, Something is Happening to Our Children. And as you can probably tell, today's episode is a little bit different. As Lucia's wing woman and partner in crime here at BHM HQ, I'm stepping forward from behind the editing desk to bring you an honest and real conversation with BHM's founder and superstar mama to the Mighty Quinn, Lucia.

No guest today, no interview, no polished expert conversation, because honestly, Lucia and I have wanted to bring you this conversation for years. Today is Lucia's story, the story behind the Brain Health Movement, the story behind the Whole Child Healing Course, and the story behind why she became so passionate, some would say obsessive, about understanding what is happening to our children.

So hello Lucien, how does it feel to be on the other side of the recording today?

Lucia Silver (00:57)
Thank you.

Well, I should say that to you. You're the one that's on the other side. I'm kind of getting a bit used to being in this seat now, but it's really lovely to be doing this together because this journey has been very much together, Connor, just you and I in the four walls of our home and driving this movement forward. Adieu.

Connah Edgington (01:04)
Bye.

Yeah.

Exactly, exactly. Well, let's get started then. So, Lucy, I've heard you say many times on other podcast interviews with people from all over the world that this was never meant to become a movement. So can you explain where this all began? Because so many parents ask you on your one-to-one coachings or via DM about your story with Quinn, but I really nice to take this opportunity now to explore it with you on the podcast.

Lucia Silver (01:54)
Yeah, of course. Well, you know, honestly, it began with fear. It began with the kind of fear that really only a parent understands. The fear that something is deeply wrong while everyone around you keeps trying to reassure you that it's normal or that it'll go away or that your feelings are just, you know, you're worrying too much. And I think millions of parents are living there right now.

I know this, I see it all the time. I was quietly worrying and burying aspects of the worry because when I look around, it's undeniable. Connor, as I say to every day at Come Back from the School Run, something is happening to our children. And I do not think that we can keep pretending otherwise. The statistics are saying so.

But I think you speak to any teacher in the classroom that's been teaching for more than 10 or 15 years. If you really, really observe children in the park, you know, walking to school, arriving at school, sitting at presentations, they are a different generation of children expressing something that we just have not seen at this scale before. You know, I'm seeing children struggling. That's what I'm saying. I'm seeing, you know, from children who can't sleep, children who can't regulate.

Biggest one, children crippled by anxiety, children overwhelmed just by ordinary life, struggling socially, struggling emotionally, struggling ⁓ developmentally. ⁓ And how is that presenting? Well, we're seeing meltdowns, we're seeing rage, ⁓ gut problems, sensory overwhelm, know, at worst, parents are talking about not just problems at school, but categoric school refusal. ⁓

then there's food restrictions and panic attacks and in extreme cases like Quinn's, know, that there are seizures, chronic inflammation, autoimmune issues. ⁓ There's just so much going on. Even ticks, know, yesterday I was in the playground with Quinn and he loves to go on the swing and we were just looking around us after school. One kid crossed the playground and had a sort of blinking tick.

another kid had a kind of almost like a shoulder spasm and that was you know just two kids in in the playground. So what's happening alongside all this Conor because it's not just the kids right parents are absolutely drowning, teachers are overwhelmed, families collectively are exhausted and somehow we are all being told

This is just the new normal. This is just what kids are like. This is just what we should expect. just quite frankly, I refuse to believe any of this is normal. I do not believe children have suddenly become weaker. What I believe is, and what I see is, and what the science is telling me, and what the experts are feeding back from their clinics is, the load has become heavier. And the frightening thing is, we've normalized it.

Connah Edgington (05:09)
Yeah, the statistics back that up now, right? And it isn't anecdotal anymore.

Lucia Silver (05:14)
And exactly that, the statistics should horrify us, right? One in five children now has a diagnosable mental health condition, one in five. ADHD rates continue climbing globally. We're now looking at 12%, particularly of boys. Autism rates have exploded. were, you know, one in 10,000 a decade ago, where now one in 36.

and California reported one in 18 last year through the CDC. you and these are not just because we are diagnosing more, in some cases we are, but for example, in Quinn's classroom, and you were telling me about a mum the other day, in her classroom, none of the children were diagnosed. So in some cases, there's absolutely no diagnosis happening. So we might be talking about...

Connah Edgington (05:45)
Thank

And those stats are

for diagnosed kids, aren't they? So actually the real numbers are probably way worse.

Lucia Silver (06:07)
That's right.

Much higher, much higher,

exactly. And school refusal. mean, that's a huge issue now that has risen dramatically and persistent absence is now that's a particular phrase for how many times a child is absent. Persistent absence is a category that it is measured in schools. That persistent absence is now around one in five children. And perhaps the most shocking of all is that we have more than half of children

with a chronic health condition of some order. So, you know, more children than ever are struggling to cope with the ordinary demands of childhood. And yet we're acting as if this is simply modern life. But when we were children, when I was young, we're, you know, a different age, but when we were children, school nurses' offices were not lined with inhalers and EpiPens. We didn't know classrooms full of anxious children. We didn't know seven-year-olds

continuously unable to sleep. We didn't know this level of sensory overwhelm, developmental struggles, emotional collapse. know, something has changed and I think parents know it. They feel it because this isn't abstract data. You know, these are real children lying awake at night, unable to sleep. Real children masking all manner of things all day at school, coming home like a champagne bottle and exploding the second they get home.

Connah Edgington (07:38)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (07:38)
because holding

it together took every ounce of nervous capacity they had. You know, these are real parents, like I was, Googling symptoms at 2 a.m. while crying in the kitchen. And I know that parent because I was that parent.

Connah Edgington (07:56)
Well, that's actually funny you say that, because I remember when I was at school, maybe one kid having autism in the year, like noticeably autistic, whether he was diagnosed or not, I don't know, but it was nowhere near the rates that you were just saying. And actually, it also reminded me, do you remember we did a podcast back with Sally Goddard Blythe.

probably a year or so ago now. And I remember in that podcast that she was saying that back in the eighties, children kind of rising five entering the school system used to be given like a basic kind of motor test. So to hop on one leg or balance, know, test how good their motor function was. And this was an indication to how the brain was developing and so how ready they were to learn essentially. And what she said is that they started finding that more and more children weren't meeting that

motor development milestone standard. And so indicating the brain development was not really on track and they actually weren't ready to learn. the government, rather than thinking in, as she said, in their great wisdom, I wonder why this is, or maybe we should try and sort this out. They thought, actually, let's phase out testing.

Lucia Silver (09:10)
Yeah, absolutely. It was

crazy and that's jaw dropping, isn't it? You're just sort of, how often are we doing that across many areas of health? Or we just don't want to look at that or that's too expensive or too complex. So we'll just ignore it and bury it because what are we going to do? We have to restructure our educational system and potentially on certain aspects of our medical system too. And we just can't, we can't do that. And it's just, and we we don't know how to.

Connah Edgington (09:21)
Yeah.

Well, they don't know, right? They just don't know how to.

Lucia Silver (09:37)
⁓ And speaking to that same point, the CDC in America, much to the horror of the doctors and experts in our world of neurodevelopment and functional medicine and functional neurology, much to their horror, the CDC have been moving what are the set milestones for when a baby should crawl, walk, talk. ⁓

because they're getting so much later in their development. So instead of asking the absolutely critical question, why? Why? You you wouldn't suddenly have hordes of animals going into the vets and going, how strange, you know, my dog isn't walking for six months. You just expect nature to take its course and do the right thing, right? But no, not with us. You know, when things go wrong, we just sort of couch it, mask it, medicate it. ⁓

Connah Edgington (10:19)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (10:28)
manage it somehow into another space and so the CDC have simply made walking crawling and talking later. It's extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary.

Connah Edgington (10:35)
Yeah, it's like,

yeah, like people forget that we are animals too. The way that an animal develops is whether you're a human, a dog, a cat or whatever, it's still development of an animal system and it happens naturally, right? People are forgetting that. So.

Lucia Silver (10:49)
Yep, absolutely.

Connah Edgington (10:53)
Can you take us back there then to when you first started noticing, you know, some signs with Quinn that things maybe weren't quite right and maybe share a little bit about how that situation was for you? Because I think a lot of people know, you know, brain health movement, Lucia, now, but not necessarily like the mother behind it all.

Lucia Silver (11:15)
Yeah, sure. You know, the raw truth of the matter is I didn't set out to build a movement. I set out to save my child. That's the truth. know, Quinn wasn't broken, but he wasn't thriving. And no one could tell me why. And that sentence alone will resonate with thousands of parents listening. You my child isn't thriving and nobody can explain why. You know, at first,

I think for every parent there are little signs of certain things, know, and all our children are individual and I'm not trying to speak for Quinn as a, you know, what happened with him is the panacea or he's the same as every other child, but for sure a lot of what I have shared has resonated with thousands of parents who have called back and said we saw that or we felt that or we think, you know, our child might have the same condition, whatever. Anyway, I suppose

the first really big expression from Quinn of anything that seemed a little bit peculiar and it was very peculiar was something that we called the wiggle. ⁓ And this was, it sort of started to develop really over COVID. So again, strange times anyway in isolation and you know, there might've been little stims, little sort of movements that he had that we see lots of little kids having in as sort of toddlers when they're excited, they sort of

vibrate their hands or sort of blink a lot. Those are just their systems, their nervous systems, just sort of responding very ⁓ viscerally and physically. Yeah, it's just sort of energy dissipating or whatever. And you don't really think too much of that, although I would look at some of those things slightly differently now as perhaps clues. But he had some of those little stims, but otherwise he slept well, he ate well, he functioned well socially. ⁓

Connah Edgington (12:40)
Yeah.

energetically.

Lucia Silver (13:08)
⁓ But really by the time kind of COVID towards end of COVID came, this movement had suddenly escalated into a huge tick. I don't know any other way to kind of describe it. It certainly felt like it was something he was doing to regulate himself, but the movement was so enormous. It wasn't like blinks that I've been describing that some children have or little movements in his head. He was fully inverting his head to his ankles.

and he was throwing his hands behind him and flapping almost like a chicken and on top of it, then he was on one leg. I mean, it was just like the craziest movement, ⁓ which clearly is saying something, shall we say. ⁓ But overall, at that point in time, he was thriving, bright, funny, connected, sensitive, beautiful little soul.

Connah Edgington (13:56)
Yes.

Lucia Silver (14:06)
And things, it just seemed that he had this quirk. But again, I was being told by anyone I was speaking to. And at that point I was, you know, obviously mentioned it to Senn, because I thought, well, they'll know, because they're all about anything alternative happening. That's special educational needs for anybody outside of the UK. I went to speak to a psychologist. I spoke to an occupational therapist, all of whom just said, it's probably just something sensory he's doing and it'll go away. And if it doesn't go away, don't worry.

because there'll probably be some sort of medication we can give for that later on down the road. I was like, but that is definitely a body telling, trying to say something. We don't flip our head upside down and kick our leg back. even though it didn't seem to correspond at the time to anything in particular, like he didn't do it when he was upset or when he was bored or when, and screens, he wasn't on a screen much then at all. No phones obviously at that point, because he was,

this point about nine or 10. ⁓ But then, but then we sort of started to do a little bit of work and I started a little bit of research and some aspects of it got better and then but then suddenly everything changed and if you're a parent listening you may know exactly what I mean when I say that it suddenly felt like I was no longer parenting the same child. I was, I mean I don't have words for it Conor, I mean you, ⁓

Connah Edgington (15:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Lucia Silver (15:35)
were around as a friend then and probably witnessed me, kind of unraveling really. But you know, when you see your child ⁓ just becoming something that you don't recognise, sudden anxiety, intrusive thoughts, he developed motor and vocal tics, so he started making more noises and tapping on the desk and ⁓ just, you know, lots of sort of

Connah Edgington (16:01)
Yeah, yeah.

Lucia Silver (16:04)
Kind of OCD like behavior repetitive behaviors repetitive patterns Rage and fear lots of sensory overwhelmed things became too much Having always been a good sleeper. suddenly wasn't sleeping Emotional dysregulation, what else can I name? I mean everything Just made no logical sense and I was terrified. I did not know

Connah Edgington (16:30)
Yeah, and I remember

you saying this as well, just the tick in itself was painful for him. He had backache all the time. Because it was so intrusive and he inverted himself in such a way, his friends struggled to interact with him. wasn't looking where he was going when he was crossing the road. were having to, it was fully just taking over his life among, with all the other kind of...

Lucia Silver (16:51)
Yeah.

Connah Edgington (16:57)
behaviors and things that were coming out as well, right?

Lucia Silver (17:00)
Absolutely, because funny what you forget when you're no longer dealing with something at such an invasive level. But yes, I'd be at the supermarket and I'd turn around and he wasn't there because he'd started stimming and I'd move to the next room and then I couldn't find him. Or yes, and the worst of it was probably crossing roads where he dipped down and then he wouldn't be looking. I it was taking all of his physical energy, all of his emotional energy and his, him, his sweet friends at the time.

Connah Edgington (17:15)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (17:27)
there were some sweet friends and then of course there were some bullies which was, I mean, unbelievably difficult, but the sweet friends would conduct a conversation going up and down with him. Literally like up and down, up and down in order to continue a conversation with him. So everybody just got used to being around this child with this stim but because he was sort of operating pretty normally in every other way, we just kind of, or they just, know, everyone around him just sort of.

adapted to it and it wasn't until this escalated that really, I mean for me, I'd been looking into it all along, you know, getting more and more information, looking into different avenues, but really when he then had, which was the final, I suppose the straw that broke the camel's back, he had a seizure where he couldn't move. It fortunately only happened, I've only actually ever seen three seizures that Quinn's had.

He had the first few at school, he had a couple at his father's house. ⁓ But when I first saw it, it was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen. I mean, he was frozen, like a frozen animal, just not moving. Just sort of staring into space, he could hear, but he couldn't move. He couldn't move his tongue, his throat, his fingers, and just sort of shaking. Not like a full epileptic fit, but just like a frozen, that's how I could describe it. And when I picked him up, I picked him up like a frozen animal and put him on my...

Connah Edgington (18:33)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (18:50)
put him on my lap and was able to just slowly stroke him back into the room. But there's nothing more terrifying than watching your child, you know, become afraid of, if you like, their own brain. You know, what is happening, mummy? What's happening to my body? Why am I having these thoughts? Why do I, you know, and some of them such dark, cyclical, horrendous, not wanting to be here thoughts. He'd be running away at school and...

The teacher was like, he's just completely unlike himself. You know, they had known him for the previous, where are we there, about six years. And they were saying, well, you know, and then they had no mechanisms to handle it, nothing that they could do. Until I started again, researching what was possible, what I could bring into school. We started to do some neurodevelopment exercises at school, getting him out of the classroom. I didn't then yet know about some of the things that I could do in other areas to help.

Connah Edgington (19:22)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Lucia Silver (19:48)
but that's where I started. ⁓ But you know, was starting to be looked at as bad behavior because the school didn't have any other way of handling it. He couldn't sit still. He was disruptive. He kept making noises. And then when everybody was looking at him, that would make him embarrassed. And then he'd behave in a certain way because all eyes were on him. You know, this was a child Connor whose nervous system, as I now know,

Connah Edgington (20:09)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (20:15)
was sort of trapped in survival, in a fight or flight. I knew that this obviously wasn't behavioural because nobody changes overnight, if you like, or in that short period of time. Something in his body felt deeply, deeply overwhelmed.

Connah Edgington (20:18)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (20:32)
because behavior is the brain's language and Quinn's nervous system, as I understand now, was screaming. And it was absolutely terrifying and at that point there were no answers, there was no information and there was very little sensible support.

Connah Edgington (20:40)
Yeah.

So what did you do then? Where did you go from there? Like if you, you can touch a little bit on a little bit of researching, but if you were, you know, at that brick wall, what did you do?

Lucia Silver (21:03)
Yeah, I mean, was honestly, I mean, I entered the maze that so many parents know, you know, starting with a deep dive of years and years, it wasn't years and years. Now it's years and years, but at the time it was every hour God sent in late night research, webinars, absolutely adamant that I was going to get to the bottom of the why.

⁓ absolutely adamant that I was going to understand what on earth was going on and of course the seizures particularly were were concerning because you know what if that was a brain bleed what if that was a tumor what if that was and you know I had to go that pathway as well just to rule that out at that stage and my goodness that that in itself took forever I went to the GP and I was starting to explain some of the things that I now know around neurodevelopment and

when the brain hasn't developed correctly and when there's inflammation in the brain and when there's leaky guts and all the things that we obviously teach on our course that our experts speak about and the doctors use on the healing roadmap to actually recover children from many of these conditions. But I was starting to speak about this to the GP, absolutely clueless, didn't know anything. And it wasn't really until I started to bridge the gap into the States and speak to experts out there.

where they were able to say to me, I think this might be a condition called PANS-PANDAS. Looked it up, hardly known in the UK. Certainly no GP knew about it. No pediatrician that I spoke to knew about it. The school didn't know about it. No psychologists knew about it. I kind of thought, well, if it's presenting this way, surely psychiatry knows about it or surely neurology knows about it. But I was just bouncing around from one department to another, trying to sort of...

Connah Edgington (22:30)
video.

Yeah.

Lucia Silver (22:53)
go, this is to do with the brain. ⁓ this is to do with the nervous. this is to, you know, trying to find someone somewhere who could look at my whole child and.

give us something, but absolutely nothing was coming. Except to know his brain's absolutely fine once we got the brain scan, which incidentally took nearly 18 months to get that brain scan. mean, can you imagine if it had actually been a bleed on the brain? It just took forever. And then I needed to find someone that I could get a diagnosis or some solidity around this pandas.

Connah Edgington (23:20)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (23:32)
diagnosis, it was very readily recognized amongst the experts in the US. Talking about it all the time, they recognize it as an autoimmune, know, a dysregulated response of the immune system, the brain was on fire, and that all these symptoms, and potentially many that could be worse, were part of this expression of PANS. And I was absolutely horrified. And that just, I suppose, made me feel even more strongly, I've got to get this information out.

Connah Edgington (23:45)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (24:02)
And as I looked into it further, these same doctors were helping with conditions or symptoms of autism and ADHD and anxiety and tics and ⁓ gut problems and allergies. These were all suddenly looking like they were connected. They were all belonging to a similar developmental total load stress on the system story. ⁓

Connah Edgington (24:29)
again.

Lucia Silver (24:30)
Yeah, so

it's just sort of starting to piece it together. Behaviour, learning, anxiety, trauma, school support. But, you know, none of those avenues, nobody seemed to be able to connect the dots.

Connah Edgington (24:33)
Yeah.

And remember you were actually when talking about that now you first kind of discovered it was Pans. We were sat together, we were working and I think you must have got an email from Dr. Josh, I think it was, wasn't it? And he is the first person that had actually given you some kind of answer to the behaviors that you were seeing and you just went into complete shock.

Lucia Silver (24:55)
Yeah, definitely.

Connah Edgington (25:09)
panic mode because it's horrible, right? It's the extremes of PANS are awful. Children not being able to walk and being institutionalized, like the seizures are...

debilitating and you just like it was full deer in headlights panic moment because it was I mean a bit of a relief that you finally had an answer but also met with absolutely no not nothing there was nothing within the constraints of mainstream medicine that could provide you any kind of support right and how would you describe that feeling for you at that time?

Lucia Silver (25:42)
No, that's right.

Isolating, certainly a lot of feelings of being gaslit because I felt I was then heading out having to educate the people who were supposed to be helping me. I was explaining this condition and being met with, you know, here's someone who's Googled too much or here's someone who thinks that they're a, you know, a burgeoning doctor or, but, you know, it was what it was. And I was reading so many case studies of children who had had this condition and it absolutely matched what Quinn was going through.

Connah Edgington (25:56)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (26:16)
And I was just horrified, horrified that none of this information was out there, but also increasingly horrified as I realized how many had this condition, but also how many had allied conditions that also were, you know, expressions of similar root causes. So this proliferation of autism.

inability to concentrate hyperactivity, you attention deficit disorder, anxiety, all of these dysregulatory, you know, struggles that we're seeing with children suddenly were all pointing to the same thing. So I kind of, I suppose what I did with that fear and what I did with that isolation was I made it a mission. I made it into a mission. thought rather than being overwhelmed by the lack of advice and the contradictory advice, ⁓

Connah Edgington (27:07)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (27:08)
And what I knew at the time was, you know, a so-called modern standard of medicine that I wasn't going to get any help. I was going to continue to get dismissed. ⁓ Instead, I was going to, you know, take this information and start educating and sharing it. And most importantly, employing it with Quinn, starting to actually do the things that I knew I could do to help him on a healing journey.

Connah Edgington (27:33)
Yeah, definitely. So is that, you say when things kind of shifted for you then, was that your moment?

Lucia Silver (27:43)
Yes, I think it probably was. ⁓ You know, certainly when there might be an implication that this was down to bad parenting or just simply anxiety or simply behavioural. Meanwhile, I'm watching Quinn have seizures and something that is clearly neurological and clearly affecting him at a sensory level. think

I realised that if I was only going to be continued to be given descriptions of his behaviour but not explanations, ⁓ then I was going to have to forge this pathway by myself. ⁓ Start asking these questions myself.

You know, why did he suddenly become overwhelmed? Why has he developed these tics? Why are he and so many children anxious, dysregulated and exhausted? Why are their nervous systems collapsing? Why are they increasingly unable to cope with ordinary life? And I suppose somewhere along the way, Conor, I just stopped accepting that there was nothing I could do. And this is what I'm trying to instill in all parents that we reach with everything that we do. Because honestly,

that sentence is deadly. Here's the diagnosis, bye-bye. Parents are waiting sometimes two and a half, three, I mean the time, the length of time is going up and up and up and up all the time with CAMs and diagnoses now. And all parents are getting at the end is a diagnostic piece of paper. It doesn't actually give them anything. It might if their children are in school and needing perhaps a bit more support or through a bit more exam time or.

Connah Edgington (29:04)
today.

Lucia Silver (29:20)
But other than that, there is nothing. It is literally just a piece of paper that confirms that they have a condition that is still being assessed behaviorally. I this is what you and I were talking about the other day. And I say to I just don't understand if there was any other condition ⁓ that you went to the doctor and you listed all these different things, know, bad tummy constipation, can't sleep. ⁓

Connah Edgington (29:32)
Yes.

Lucia Silver (29:47)
feeling overwhelmingly anxious, can't control my feelings, ⁓ know, allergic to food. mean, name any one of them or name all of them. The first thing you do is test. You would treat it as a biological, you'd say why. You wouldn't go, ⁓ that sounds like this thing called autism for which I've got a list of behavioral symptoms. How this...

Connah Edgington (29:51)
video.

Yeah. Yeah.

for which hasn't

been changed in the last 50 years,

Lucia Silver (30:15)
that hasn't

changed in the last 50 years exactly still asking the same diagnostic questions. Despite the fact that we know, which we'll come on to, know, all the increased stresses that are not there, 80,000 chemicals that were simply not there 10 years ago, processed food, screens, birth interventions and so forth, all these things. But no, no, no, it's none of that. This is just a list of behavior and it's either genetic

or just there's nothing you can do. So that's what I mean by that sentence is deadly. We absolutely have to start advocating and asking why. And the science is coming out now. We're not having to advocate in a, I don't need to just say, well, Quinn is in recovery and he's thriving. And that's all the proof that I need. There are hundreds of children in recovery now and there is a absolute huge.

Connah Edgington (30:52)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (31:09)
library more, 100 libraries of information now on the necessary science and research to back up what we are seeing in our children and how we can reverse these struggles that we are seeing.

Connah Edgington (31:17)
Yes.

Yeah.

So was there a specific moment that really changed the journey for you?

Lucia Silver (31:31)
I think it was probably more an accumulation of realizations around no longer asking how to manage behavior and asking instead what is Quinn's body or what are these children's bodies trying to communicate. That changed everything because then I found experts asking very different questions.

you know, our experts on our ⁓ Brain Board of Excellence that we have curated and who are on our, you know, on this podcast, but also on our Whole Child Healing Roadmap, like Dr. Tony Ebel on modern day birth trauma and modern birth interventions, Dr. Josh Madsen on neurodevelopment, Dr. Nancy Ohara specifically on ⁓ brain encephalitis and PANS and PANDAS and autism, Dr. Robert Melillo, an extraordinary

contribution to science on the correct development of the brain and primitive reflex integration. Sally Goddard-Bly that you alluded to earlier, another brilliant woman, absolute trailblazer, understanding the connection between ⁓ our development and our learning and our eye centers, our balance centers, all of these, just the natural biology, the natural development of life and what we're supposed to see when that

Connah Edgington (32:35)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (32:54)
pathway is honoured and what happens when it's not. know through to Lucinda Miller our brilliant you know resident you know diet and naturopath and all things good with food. My beautiful Dr Lauren Lee Stone who's helped me on my journey specifically with Quinn and the Pans Pandas reversal. Her children you know she had a son with autism and a second son with Pans both completely reversed their conditions.

Dr. Kylie Foster, gosh, I mean, just so many brilliant, brilliant people. Dr. Kylie Foster on, in a way, the whole family piece on neurologically focused chiropractor, which many of our experts have come from that discipline, looking specifically at the development of the brain and the nervous system and what happens when we stop being able to adapt to the stresses. How do we bring the nervous system fully back online?

And although all of them, you know, they're all specialized in different areas, they kept saying versions of the same thing. The body can't heal, the body can't regulate, the body can't develop properly when it's stuck in a chronic defense state or fight or flight, as we call it. And I suppose, honestly, that sentence changed. ⁓ My understanding of it has deepened somewhat scientifically since, but really is a first entree into understanding what I was dealing with.

That helped me understand because I don't believe that Quinn and many other children facing challenges like Quinn are failing. I now know they are simply adapting and adapting intelligently to overwhelming environments because survival will always take priority over development, always. know, the body will prioritize survival over speech, over focus, over learning.

over social engagement, emotional regulation, and suddenly so much started to make sense. A child is not speaking out of choice or out of bad behavior. Their brilliant biology and their nervous system has adapted and taking the decision to prioritize their survival over that stage in development because it's dealing with other stresses that we need to understand more fully. Because maybe the child who can't focus

Connah Edgington (35:16)
Yeah, only keeping...

the essential...

organs going. It's like, does, what does, what do I need to simply be able to keep being alive right now? And actually, speech doesn't really serve me that much. I can get by without talking. I can get by without looking people in the eye. can get by without being able to read this book, because actually what I need to be able to do is keep the heart pumping, keep the belly going, you know, get people those, those very primitive systems going. I think people, again, it's taking it back to that, that animal piece, we are animals and the

body will do what it needs to to survive and if as you said if you've got all of these these environmental factors as compounding factors coming in the body just will go no I'm not doing anymore I can't I'm at capacity I can't do it so I need to be able to keep alive so I will just do these very very basic things

Lucia Silver (36:09)
Yep, that's

exactly right. we use the analogy a lot across our podcasts of the lion in the room, but I think it's really, really helpful because it takes us back to understanding exactly how adaptive the nervous, the nervous system is. But you know, you wouldn't say to a child when a lion was in the room, why aren't you speaking? You know, yeah, yeah, please, please focus on the blackboard. You know, it just, just is, it's completely

Connah Edgington (36:31)
Please read that book.

Lucia Silver (36:39)
surplus to requirement in that moment. And once a child's system has become loaded up enough with the stresses that we're going to talk about, there simply isn't room for the niceties of executive functioning, reading and listening and sitting still. That isn't going to happen. When the nervous state is in fight or flight or what we call sympathetic dominance, cortisol is high, the heart's pumping, the racing, you know, we are ready to run a mile.

Connah Edgington (36:55)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (37:08)
very fast. We're certainly not pumped for sitting down and listening for the next hour. So when you see it that way.

Connah Edgington (37:15)
all just

completely shut down, right? That's that next step after fight flight is that freeze state. It goes, it has enough until it goes absolutely not. No, everything is being cut out now.

Lucia Silver (37:24)
Yep,

yeah that's right and that's what we talk about with essentially with the perfect storm or the progression of what is happening with

with children's nervous systems and ours, by the way, everything we're talking about is as true to parents and adults as it is to our young children. It's just our focus is on our precious children. But absolutely, how often do you see people who it feels like the lights are on, but no one's at home, they've checked out. And certainly I can speak to this as a parent. And I hear this all the time from mothers who are, they have been in a chronic state of hypervigilance, fight or flight.

containing for the whole family, sometimes more than one child that's dysregulated, a partner who's not supporting at home, ⁓ just absolutely, they might be gaslit, overwhelmed, they're not sleeping, they're not eating, and how long has that been going on? And eventually, the nervous system adapts once again. So it goes from this state of absolute hypervigilance, you know.

totally impractical for it to keep cortisol levels that high, for the heart to be racing at that level, for the breath to be the palpitating, you know, that's a kind of short term solution, but once it recognises, ⁓ you're in a chronic state of stress, for, you know, I can see this is going to be going on for a long time.

Connah Edgington (38:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lucia Silver (38:43)
then lots of other things start to shut down. That's not necessary. That's not necessary. And you find yourself, as I have done and certainly did feel when Quinn was at his, you know, when this pan's flare, as it's called, the first and only very serious flare that he ever had. ⁓ But it absolutely knocked me for six. I think there was undoubtedly PTSD associated with it. I shut down and I still can have periods of

being triggered by that. I'm still working on my nervous system now. But for me, that shutdown is a very real state of just it's called freeze. And that's exactly what it feels like you're sort of in social situations, and you're not really feeling very present, you're feeling very withdrawn. You're actually not feeling very much. And it's a very clever way. Once again, this is not anything but the genius way of our brain and nervous system, adapting for survival. You

don't have any surplus energy, Lucia, you're actually on the verge of a nervous breakdown, you are just trying to keep going. So we're gonna keep this at a very, very low functioning end, just so you can keep ticking along. And when I describe it like that to parents, I mean, you've heard me talking on some of my conversations. And when I'm speaking on one-to-one and listening to parents there, they're just like, that's me.

Connah Edgington (39:49)
Thank

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Lucia Silver (40:08)
That's me, I just sat there not feeling anything. That's me, I just feel completely shut down. I don't want to see anybody. I kind of do want to see someone, but I don't want to see someone. I just don't, I don't really know where I am. I feel lost.

Connah Edgington (40:08)
Mm. Yeah.

Yeah, and for kids it's

almost like the, I know you've talked about it, like they just, they don't feel their bodies. They don't feel hot. They don't feel cold. They don't feel anything, you know? It's that complete detachment from self, really, isn't it?

Lucia Silver (40:35)
Yes, I mean that's due to other areas of neurodevelopment with proprioception and so on which can happen as well. But yes, I mean all of these different areas are and certainly you know for Quinn that was he just became very disengaged, very disembodied, very you know that was the most painful part. Yes, well not just where's my son because he's unrecognizable but where's my son you know the little guy that I kind of used to enjoy chatting with and connecting with he's just kind of gone.

Connah Edgington (40:53)
Not himself.

Lucia Silver (41:05)
So to have him back in connection, ⁓ I mean, what more could you ever want as a parent than to, you know, have your little guy with his wicked sense of humor back again and taking the Mickey out of you because he's connected. He's back in the room. He's back in the room. So yes, it's thinking about it that way, isn't it, Connor? Maybe the body has simply diverted every available resource towards survival.

Connah Edgington (41:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And just bringing it back, you alluded to a little bit earlier, this idea of the kind of the perfect storm. Could you kind of go into that a little bit more? Because kind of this sounds like this is where this comes in, doesn't it?

Lucia Silver (41:37)
Yeah.

Yes, this is exactly where it comes in. you know, I have there are there are, you know, the very brilliant Dr. Tony Ebel speaks to this in our podcast with him. So there are some brilliant I mean, just do Google it and have a look at what comes up. But for sure. ⁓ Beth Lambert in documenting hope there are there are many that are talking about this perfect storm or this total viral load.

Because it is really one thing. It is the load and children today are growing up in environments that their biology was simply never designed for. And I'm just going to list some of them because I think this is the easiest way of just, you when you hear it, you just go, you know, ultra processed foods, clearly, know, American kids, they're saying now about 75 % of their diet is coming from ultra processed food. And even now, you know, if you go into the supermarket,

It's really, really hard just to buy whole foods. It feels like 75 % once again of the supermarket is in a packet with ingredients. Well, that's not whole food. The minute it's in a packet, it's not whole food. People often say to me, what do mean by whole food? I mean a fruit, I mean a vegetable, I mean a piece of meat. And even that half the time has been messed around with. So yeah, exactly. There you go. There you go.

Connah Edgington (42:40)
Yeah.

not a hundred ingredients on the back of a packet. If it's got more than five ingredients, it's probably very bad.

Lucia Silver (43:07)
So you've got that and then you've got the issue of everything that's being sprayed on the whole foods and then sprayed on it before it's packeted and then it's packeted into plastic and so on and so on. So that's just a part of the food piece. Then you've got artificial light at midnight. You know, we do not go to sleep and wake up to the natural, what are called the natural circadian rhythms of the sun. We're on blue light and that's without the piece on, you know, screens and gaming and everything. I'm just talking about

Connah Edgington (43:14)
Yeah. Yes.

Lucia Silver (43:36)
artificial light that comes from our phones, from our computers, from our televisions, way past the time when the sun's gone out. We used to live with candlelight and that's, you know, that's the natural way of being. Those artificial lights tell our body, our body clock, that it's daytime and therefore we're not releasing the melatonin. We've got our hormones all messed up. It's all, you know, our healing cycles, our detoxification cycles are all supposed to be led by natural light.

Connah Edgington (43:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lucia Silver (44:06)
So artificial light in and of itself is huge nowadays. Children are going to bed with their phones and they're often on their phones in bed until the early hours messing about, right? And screens are pernicious for so many reasons. I could do 20 podcasts on screen and tech alone. But the piece that is particularly concerning is how it's replacing movement.

Connah Edgington (44:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Lucia Silver (44:32)
We're not

playing in our front yards like we used to and movement is development. One of the key things that we begin to teach, what we teach at the beginning of the course is around, you know, what actually develops the brain? Why are we not meeting our milestones? Why are we not developing as we should do? And other times if you ask a mother, what do you think a brain or a growing baby actually needs? We all kind of go, well, breast milk, sleep, but it's movement.

Movement is what actually develops the brain and your average person in defense to them and to me I didn't know before I started this movement is one of the primary vehicles for developing the brain and screens Have robbed us of that natural movement the minute a child is bored and again in Parentheses we're also talking about adults here. We're grabbing a screen. We're putting the telly on we're gaming We're not going on our bike playing footy getting in the front yard

Connah Edgington (45:15)
Yes.

Lucia Silver (45:28)
We've talked about sleep destruction as a result of all of the above. The food, the light, the screens that are winding up our brains before we go to sleep. Chemical overload, not just in the foods that we eat, but in the toxins at home, in the household cleaning products, in what we're washing our plates and our clothes in, what we are spraying in aerosols in the air, you know, what is coming out of cars when we walk down the street, the plastics that are in

are water, the fluorides and chlorides that are in everything. I mean, as Dr. Josh says so many times, both to my face and in the public arena, the cards are stacked against us coming in as children now. Sedentary childhoods, disconnected communities, overstimulated nervous systems, chronic stress.

Connah Edgington (46:12)
Yes.

Lucia Silver (46:24)
and parents, and I speak for myself here, are surviving on cortisol and caffeine, trying to co-regulate children while dysregulating themselves. Yeah, it's a very, very tough world to operate in and our nervous systems first and foremost need a huge amount of support.

Connah Edgington (46:30)
Thank

Lucia Silver (46:53)
in order to walk this path because there's a lot that we need to be aware of and a lot we need to address.

Connah Edgington (47:00)
Yeah, and kids are co-regulating from us, right? So if that's the state of mum's nervous system, then how the hell can you expect your child to be in a nice calm state if they're co-regulating from that chaos and that panic?

Lucia Silver (47:16)
That's right. ⁓ And once again, as you've heard me say a thousand times, we hear the experts say it, you know, we know that the brain develops in a very particular order and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for emotional regulation, for shutting down some of these,

you know, overactive areas, the sort of the breaks ⁓ and a lot of the higher executive functioning that we develop later in life. ⁓

that that area of the brain isn't fully developed until we're about 26, 27. So, you know, you you're squeaching teenagers to some extent, is not what we want to see. But there are aspects of that where that brain is still developing. So not only is it from the very, very, very first moments of skin on skin, that a baby is co regulating once born or in in vitro in the womb, you know, picking up on on a mother's nervous system.

Connah Edgington (47:58)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (48:11)
but right the way through to those teenage years, it is so important that we are available. They literally borrow our nervous systems. And we teach so much of this on the course and our experts across all the disciplines are aware of the importance of co-regulation. The very great Stephen Borges, who teaches all about the vagus nerve, which some parents may have understood, which is the wandering nerve that makes its way.

throughout our entire body and regulates everything from, you know, gut, nervous system, endocrine, everything. This is the adapting nervous system that we were talking about earlier, you know, can you, because we are supposed to be able to jump into fight or flight and then back into ventral vagal and then the parasympathetic, rest and digest, we're supposed to be adapting. But we get stuck. ⁓ We get stuck and that's, you know, the PTSD that I sort of alluded to earlier on. ⁓

Connah Edgington (48:56)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (49:08)
looking back at the state that I was in, in trying to heal Quinn, my nervous system wasn't at that point available to him at all. I was, you know, out for lunch as they say, definitely not coping. You know, I wanted the answer to be magnesium, not me. You know, I'm not the problem here, but I certainly don't feel I was the problem, but I certainly wasn't able to help at that point in time. But I eventually realized that my nervous system wasn't a footnote.

Connah Edgington (49:12)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (49:37)
it was, you know, the opening chapter.

Connah Edgington (49:40)
Yeah. And so all of these kind of these symptoms, these meltdowns, these panic, the rage that we see in kids, basically you're saying that it's their nervous system under stress, right? Yeah. And is that where things like the cell danger response and mitochondrial dysfunction become kind of important and come into the play?

Lucia Silver (49:51)
Yep, it was actually there.

Yes, yes. mean, again,

sequence is everything. you know, on the course and through our podcast, we are really, really trying to show, you know, what needs to happen first. And yes, the co-regulation piece is sort of where we need to start because our environment needs to feel safe. Mum, dad, the sort of family ecosystem needs to feel safe for biology, for biology, for the cell response, this fight or flight, what we call cell danger response.

you know, it's on the surface, but it's all the way back at a mitochondrial, you know, what is the energy aspect of the cells that are powering the cells? They are affected too, because they are responsible not just for the energy, which is critical, you can't heal, you can't develop, you can't detoxify, you can't learn, you can't pay attention, you can't do any of those things without energy. And very often,

our children in this space are depleted of energy. That is what we mean by kind of mitochondrial dysfunction. But the mitochondria, the absolute powerhouse of the cell, are also responsible for surveillance. They are the ones that tell the body, the rest of the body, are you safe? Are you okay? Do we need to be, you know, and when it's not, creates inflammation. And inflammation is kind of the root of all evil. It's what's supposed to happen once again.

Inflammation is what's supposed to happen as an immune response, but we are not supposed to be stuck in inflammation, which is why, you know, my favorite book, one of my favorite books called Brain Under Attack describes it as brain on fire. There's just too much, too much of a response and it just doesn't stop. It's flooding the system when it's time to stop. It's time for rest and digest now, but the system doesn't feel safe. ⁓ So yes, that is...

Connah Edgington (51:36)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (51:52)
That is where much of this language around total viral load, perfect storm, cell danger response, understanding that as the premise before you even begin, cellular health, getting the nervous system and the body ready and safe enough to develop is really important before you start throwing hundreds of pounds worth of, even on tests, but even on...

know, supplements and lots of different protocols. know, has the body got the energy, the resource, the nutrition, the safe environment to begin on this journey?

Connah Edgington (52:35)
Yeah, because

sound quite intimidating when you say things like mitochondrial dysfunction and cell dangerous response. Oh, sounds very, very sciencey, right? But they're quite normal and human and every day, really, if you kind of strip it back from the science, aren't

Lucia Silver (52:53)
Yeah, absolutely. But the concept is actually incredibly, incredibly human and the body is intelligent. If resources are limited, the body prioritizes survival, as we've alluded to. And there are researchers like Dr. Navot, who described this

cell danger response and this is essentially the body shifting into protection mode. The cells sense danger and when the cells sense danger they reallocate the energy away from growth, away from development, away from repair and towards defense and suddenly you realize this is the point. Healing requires energy, learning requires energy, speech requires energy.

Emotional regulation requires energy, social engagement requires energy. And if a child's body is already exhausted simply trying to survive, what exactly are we expecting from them? And many parents just to this point of our parents listening will absolutely testify to the exhaustion that some of their children express at the end of a school day.

just nothing left for conversation. And some of them are already masking some of the symptoms. They might be masking a tick all day. They might be masking meltdowns, anxiety, dysregulation, repetitive thoughts in their heads, all the symptoms we know that are coming from this biology, if you like. So they come home totally depleted.

And as I've said, many of these conditions are already stemming from mitochondrial dysfunction. There is a lack of energy. So what do we expect from them?

Connah Edgington (54:36)
Yeah. And you often use the the canary is not the problem. Can you explain that because it links into what you're saying here.

Lucia Silver (54:43)
Yeah, I probably use that a bit out of context. you know, the people that I

really think are fabulous probably use it in a much more intelligent and explanatory fashion. Lambert was probably one of the first people that I heard talking about it. you know, years ago, for those who aren't aware, miners used canaries underground because they were exquisitely sensitive to toxic gases. So ⁓ essentially,

by saying the canary wasn't the problem, what I mean is the canary was the warning. And when the air became dangerous, the canaries stopped singing rather tragically. so silence was the signal that the environment itself had become unsafe. And honestly, I think when we say, you know, our children are the canaries in the coal mine, it makes me want to weep, but what we're saying is,

you know, our children are doing exactly the same thing. Their sensitive nervous systems are telling us something. These are children whose bodies can no longer compensate for the load. And for me, what makes that metaphor even more heartbreaking now, and this, think we discussed this, and I, in my Mighty Quinn podcast with her, but that some children are literally losing their voice.

Connah Edgington (56:01)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (56:06)
We're seeing so many instances of non-verbal autism as it's diagnosed and they've stopped speaking. Some are retreating into absolute shutdown. So the irony of that, you know, they are expressing the toxins, the stresses, the shutdown is the result that their bodies can no longer cope. And as a result,

speaking is one of those extraneous, superfluous, unnecessary things at this point in time. So, you know, what if in some cases this is not random dysfunction, but profoundly intelligent biological adaptation, right?

Because survival will always take priority over sophistication. Always.

Connah Edgington (57:00)
Yeah, definitely. Couldn't agree more. somewhere in all of this, you realised that your nervous system mattered too, right? I mean, we talked earlier about when you found out that Quinn had pans and we were sitting at this table and you were in that complete shock, panic, horror mode. Can you just talk a little bit more about that? Because I think...

That's the real piece for lot of mothers and a lot of mothers that like to speak to you and want to speak to you because you have been through it. You know, you understand what it feels like and can relate to them when, you know, so often doctors can't.

Lucia Silver (57:46)
Yes, ⁓ I think it's a very poignant piece in the story because I think a lot of the time as mothers we want to do absolutely everything we possibly can for our children and sometimes we've just reached our threshold and we can't contain any more and we're struggling and there isn't really enough dialogue about that, perhaps enough understanding of the impact that

our children struggling has on our nervous systems and vice versa. You know, we've alluded to the nervous system and the need for co-regulation as a biological necessity that the way that the brain develops, they need to rely on us. But in turn, we have to take care of our nervous systems. And it's a little bit more concrete than, you know, put the oxygen mask on yourself first, otherwise everyone in the aeroplane is gonna die. It is really...

scientific. It's not a nicety that we need to take care of our nervous systems. We absolutely need to in order that our children can feel safe and regulate.

Connah Edgington (58:46)
Yes.

Lucia Silver (58:58)
I think at its worst it was a feeling of absolute.

isolation. I want to say exhaustion, but in a funny way, I kind of wasn't even allowing myself to feel the exhaustion. I was definitely running on empty. I was hyper vigilant, hyper active, hyper engaged on the computer until God knows what time, pulling apart science, trying to understand, piece the

piece everything together, running into school, defending Quinn and his, at the time, behavior, trying to teach the teachers something of what I was learning and understanding, trying to navigate medical appointments, again, joining the dots and contradictory advice, feeling confused, and all the while just so deeply worried, worried, you know, when I'd seen

the worst of what Pans could be. When I'd seen where this journey could end, I was, yeah, terrified. So sleepless nights, just constantly rattled and somehow not really able to talk to anybody about it because nobody really understood or they'd give their 10 pennies worth on what they thought it was or what could be done. And it wasn't what I knew was really going on. So.

Connah Edgington (1:00:24)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (1:00:25)
I just felt on my own. I think that was the really, really tough part was feeling on my own and as a single mum as well, no one really to bounce it off and anyone who would see Quinn doing his stim just like, what the hell is that? You know, what is that? It was just so alien. ⁓

Connah Edgington (1:00:47)
Yeah.

Yeah,

I do remember you being almost like you were just riding on a knife edge the whole time. Like it was like, you know, one bit of bad news away from just like bursting into tears. It's essentially how a lot of the time I think even just seeing you looked, you know, I obviously saw a bit of a different side, but it was definitely that. was just overwhelmed, panic, confusion, but.

Lucia Silver (1:01:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

and as I said, the only thing that I could then constructively do, and we all have our different ways of dealing with things, I think eventually these things turn this sort of frustrated rage eventually turns into depression and sadness and exhaustion. along the way, for me, I took action. I think that's how I dealt with it. I remember dealing with my father's, you know, when my father

you know, the cancer and eventually sadly passed. My way of dealing with that was to get on an aeroplane over to New York and find the leading specialist in his cancer, which was very unusual. And I gate crashed a medical conference. I remember I gate crashed a medical conference and sat down on a table of oncologists specialists from around the world. And then I bawled at the doctor that I needed for my

Connah Edgington (1:02:00)
Well, she did.

Lucia Silver (1:02:11)
for my dad and is like, what are you doing here? And I was like, you're not a doctor? No, and where are you from? London, how did you get in? But I guess that's one of the coping mechanisms some of us have. And it's certainly the one that I have. kind of get solving, taking action. But I guess along that journey, Conor, as you know, there was just no forgiveness for the sleep that I needed and the food that I should have been eating and the self care.

Connah Edgington (1:02:18)
laughter

Lucia Silver (1:02:41)
And the self-care piece, of course, because everything in this course and with these experts is born of a genuine lived in experience. The self-care piece is a huge part of what I want our parents to understand. Are you ready? Are you resilient enough to ask these questions and begin on this journey? I believe you are, but you just need to be aware of resourcing yourself. Resourcing yourself, as Dr. Kylie Foster said to me.

Connah Edgington (1:03:06)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (1:03:09)
who I go to for neurologically focused chiropractic work, know, can we expand your window of tolerance?

Connah Edgington (1:03:17)
I mean, and everything that you've just said is exactly how the brain health movement was born, right? Because you didn't want mothers, parents, carers to go through what you went through.

Lucia Silver (1:03:30)
Yeah, exactly. mean, after what is now probably nearly a total of five years of sweat and as you said, obsession, fear, conferences, interviews, research, flying around the world, meeting the most brilliant minds at the cutting edge of science and research in this area, plenty of trial and error. I realized that the problem wasn't that the knowledge didn't exist. The problem was that it was fragmented. Fragmented, know, siloed as our medical system is.

Connah Edgington (1:03:55)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (1:03:59)
You know, the gut department operating separately from the respiratory department operating differently from endocrinology separately. But why? This is a whole organism, a whole ecosystem, one part impacting on the other. You know, one expert understood inflammation, another understood birth trauma, another understood primitive reflexes. You know, even in our functional medical root cause approach, still some of this information is siloed.

you know, another understood gut health, another understood neurodevelopment and parents are kind of expected to somehow stitch it all together themselves while they're drowning emotionally. You know, on a good day, it would be hard to do. So yes, I guess, as I said, I didn't set out to do this, but I built the roadmap. I wish someone had handed me when Quinn first became sick. So not just one point of view, not just one protocol.

Connah Edgington (1:04:37)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (1:04:54)
but everything that you need to understand in the right sequence, bringing together the world leading doctors and pediatric neurodevelopment experts and stitching that knowledge together in the right sequence. Because healing has a sequence, just like development does, healing does too. And a lot of it is about fueling the body with what it needs to do what it was going to do anyway. This is not about imposing anything on the system. This is the...

Connah Edgington (1:05:21)
again.

Lucia Silver (1:05:24)
returning to the natural, natural course of development.

Connah Edgington (1:05:28)
Yeah. Well that leads really nicely into my next question then. So how is Quinn now? How's he doing?

Lucia Silver (1:05:35)
or, well, he's delicious. He's thriving. I don't really know what to say to that lightly because there were genuinely moments, as you know, that I thought I was losing him. But, you know, today he is funny. He's connected. He's popular. He loves his friends. He loves school. Deeply emotionally. He's a cool boy. Yeah, he's definitely a cool boy. Too cool, too cool. Emotionally insightful.

Connah Edgington (1:05:38)
Thank

Very cool. He's a cool boy.

Lucia Silver (1:06:03)
thriving, well-liked, know, all the things that we want, we want for our little ones. Not so little, he's just this month overtaken me. So he's touching five feet, seven and a half now. The half is very important. Biggest feet known to beasts, I think. Yeah, absolutely, enormous flippers. But you know, all of this is not because we found one magic quick pill or answer.

Connah Edgington (1:06:19)
the biggest feet known to man in a 12 year old.

Lucia Silver (1:06:34)
As you well know, you've watched the journey, but because we stopped fighting his biology and started supporting it. And I need parents to hear this, know, nothing is fixed. Everything is changeable. You know, I heard the wonderful Kelsey Spanbauer who's delivering the cellular health, the mitochondrial health piece on our course saying, you know, it actually only takes

three days to repair the gut, the gut lining. know, the body is busy changing, adapting, renewing, renovating, rewiring. The brain is neuroplastic. It is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant organism. We just need to remove a lot of the stresses and things that are getting in the way so that this infinite adaptability can exercise itself. know, children's brains are adaptable. Healing is...

possible, not overnight, not through panic, but through consistent, informed and compassionate support over time.

Connah Edgington (1:07:43)
and they want to heal. You say that a lot. The body wants to get back to health and healing. We just need to get out of its way.

Lucia Silver (1:07:52)
That's right. That's right.

So, Connor, shall I close on this? Yeah. I mean, I'm just thinking, I hope this has been helpful to everybody. You this is a very informal chat. I didn't know what Connor was going to ask, but I hope that it has provided, ⁓ you know, a helpful platform for you. Connor, your questions have been brilliant. And I'm just so pleased you've been the warrior by my side, both personally and professionally. I could have done...

Connah Edgington (1:08:00)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (1:08:27)
None of the Brain Health movement without you, but I certainly couldn't do life without you. ⁓ So, yes, so thank you very much for being here today and helping us have this conversation that so many parents have asked us, you know, to share really. And I hope that it is helpful hearing the more personal story. And perhaps I should say that if you are listening today and thinking, this is my child, please hear me. You know, you're not imagining it. There is hope.

Connah Edgington (1:08:31)
Thank

Lucia Silver (1:08:55)
But parents, we have to get curious again. We have to ask why and advocate and learn and stop accepting there is nothing you can do because our children need more than passive symptom management. They need adults willing to understand the story underneath the symptoms. So Conor, we're going to offer the free masterclass, aren't we, at the end of this?

Connah Edgington (1:09:19)
Yes, we are.

Lucia Silver (1:09:21)
So we created a free masterclass that's called From Burnout to Breakthrough. And it feels like a really appropriate step, I guess, from hearing the podcast today, because it sort of does two things. Once you understand what's really happening, as we've said, everything changes, not just for the child, but for the whole family. And maybe the greatest act of love right now is refusing to believe that this level of suffering is simply normal because our children deserve better.

And honestly, I believe that parents are the ones who are going to lead that change. So the Burnout to Breakthrough Masterclass begins by explaining some of the context for the epidemic we're seeing in children's health. It then has some fantastic excerpts from some of the world leading experts on the course. In fact, some bona fide excerpts from the course so you can see exactly how the information is ⁓ taught and how

It's easily implemented and it's digestible and friendly and not intimidating and paced. And then the second half of the masterclass is with myself and Dr. Kylie Foster talking about regulation and how we manage our stress levels and how our nervous system adapts and what we need to do to broaden our window of tolerance because many of us feel at this point in time,

I can't do anymore. I just, I haven't got it in me. I don't know how I can begin on this journey with my child. And this really points to that overwhelm and has some really helpful tips, doesn't it, Connor, to kind of, yeah, help you through. So, yeah, so download that. The link will be in the show notes. And...

Connah Edgington (1:10:55)
was amazing.

Lucia Silver (1:11:05)
I think that will be a very helpful next step for any parents listening. So if this has been empowering, enlightening or helpful in any way to you or perhaps other parents you may know, please share and also subscribe and like so we can reach more families needing support and families who are curious to know the why behind the struggles. We will see you in the next episode of My Mighty Quinn and thank you for joining us today.