Elaine Taylor-Klaus
When we slow down, we pay attention to ourselves and down-regulate our nervous systems. We stay present and do our own inner work, which is what you're speaking to. Our ability to be present to our kids is so much more profound. 

Welcome back, everybody, to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact podcast. My guest is Peter Fitzpatrick, and we're going to be talking about, well, he's going to tell us a little bit more, but basically, cultivating emotional trust, safety, and intelligence. I think in neurodivergent young people, that sounds like a summation of what you and I were talking about before. But, welcome, Peter, it's great to have you. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Thank you so much. I'm super excited to be here. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Why don't you start by telling us how you got to be working with the neurodivergent audience? Like what brings you here? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah, well, I was pausing this moment to wonder how much of my story to share when I was seven, my parents divorced, and it was a pretty ugly event. It was a pretty challenging event for our family. And that meant that our house was, I'll just call it, for now, emotionally unstable until I left for university. And I didn't recognize the patterns, beliefs, and wounds that I developed over that period until I was about 28. And I also didn't know until I was in university that I had ADHD. Okay. And so I had an upbringing in which I felt a lot of feelings, which is a symptom of ADHD. Like heavy swings. Right. And didn't really have anyone to talk to about what was going on with respect to those swings and also with respect to my parents.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, let me see if I got it right. So you were diagnosed with ADHD in college, which we all know means you feel the feels, but then something else happened at 28, later in your 20s, that kind of brought you to a new awareness. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's right. The right relationship. Okay. So the right partner. Yeah. So I spent about eight years unwinding all of that. I will get to the point quickly. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I'm listening. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
About a year ago, I spent eight years identifying those beliefs and patterns, and hopefully, I'm towards the end of the journey of working on them all. And about a year ago, I was thinking about what we could do, what I could do with this, like, breakout technology. AI has been so much change in what AI enables us to create now, and the idea of creating a toy with it came up, and I shared that with my co-founder, a woman named Robyn Campbell, who at the time was writing cartoons at Lego that helped kids build social-emotional skills. Okay, so she made this comment, but she's like, maybe if we did that, we could create a toy that helped kids process their emotions. And as soon as you said that, I was like, oh, wow, I needed that growing up. Like, could you imagine if I had a little plushie to talk about all the stuff that was going on? I would have awaited so much pain if there was a structured conversation I could have with someone I trusted or something I trusted.

That sort of set us off on the path. We were in Whistler, British Columbia, at the time. We knew San Francisco was the place to build that business, so we got in the car, drove down to San Francisco, and applied to hackathons on the way. One of those hackathons was the TED AI Hackathon that they host here during the AI Weeks, or weekend every year here. We won. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
You won? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
We won. Yeah. And so I quit my job when I was about to go on stage to meet Chris, the founder of TED, and then that kind of set us off and we've been doing it ever since. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Wow. So when you won, did that mean you got funding or support to actually do it, or did it just give you access to be able to go out and get funding?

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it just helped with funding a little bit. If anything, even more than that, we got a lot done over the weekend from a product development perspective, and it was just like, Oh, wow, this thing is valuable.  At the event? There was, like, crowds would form whenever we gave demos. I'd never experienced that before. I have built technology my whole life, and never have I had crowds form around the software UI we built or whatever. And so it just told us that we were onto something important. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
That's amazing. So, what is it … that's important here that we're talking about because, and we'll talk a little bit later, I'll give everybody a chance to find out more about what you do and what this product is. But what's the problem you're trying to solve? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
The problem we're trying to solve is that I've spent a lot of time talking to parents over the past year, and one of the things that's clear is that parenting is hard, and I think it's always been hard, but it's getting harder. Yeah, and I agree. I'm sure there are lots of reasons for that, but the primary one that keeps coming up in my conversations is that families are more remote than in the past.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
By that, you mean extended family? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
From family and community, like the whole, it takes a village idea, and the village is thinner and thinner and less and less likely to come over and like deliver pie when you're sick, you know? So, data shows that parents spend twice as much time with their kids now compared to 50 years ago. Really? Yeah. I can track it down and send it to you. Yeah. And so there's less community coming over to help. It's less likely for kids to be able to play around in the neighborhood with the neighbor's kids. In fact, that's almost unheard of in most neighborhoods now. And so, parents have a greater burden of time they have to put into raising their kids. And They don't have twice as much time, right? And so, what do they end up doing? Screens are like the most common sort of like a guilty pleasure, a guilty way to help with this, like a greater burden, right? 

But it's pretty clear that's not healthy in excess, right? And so that's the problem we're trying to solve: How do we help parents raise kids without having to put them in front of screens, given the changes in our world? And then if you look at the neurodiverse community, you can like take that problem and turn the dial up. Children have such a greater need for attention that the problem is much worse. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right. So, children need more from parents who are already expected to do more at a time when they get less support, and the tax on, you know, the easy solution is actually helpful in the short run and can be damaging in the long run.

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's really well articulated. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, that sounds complicated, doesn't it? Which, you know, we haven't had a chance to talk much about what we do at Impact, but what we do is we support parents of neurodiverse kids by teaching them to use neurodiversity informed coaching skills. Because coaching is an empowerment-based modality that allows them to not become their kids' coach but to take a coach-like approach to improve the way they communicate and to be able to be more present when they're present. We can't give them more time, but we can improve the nature of the time when they're with their kids. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that makes sense. We think about that a lot too. Like the tip, if you go on a chatGPT and you ask it how you should do something, it will be like, well, here's how you should do it. And then, it lists the solution experience. So we've had to put a lot of effort into having Fawn, the companion we've built for families, not do that and coach the child through coming up with their own solution. Yeah. Well, to just give it to them. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right. Well, and you know, there's a lot of research on that. If you give it to them, it's information and they'll vote on whether they agree with it or not. But if you involve them in it, then it's their insight and they will own that information differently or that decision differently.

Peter Fitzpatrick
You're making me think of my dad growing up. I would constantly ask him things, and he'd be like, let's think that through. And I'd be like, no, just tell me, dad, I know, you know, that's funny. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
It really is. Let's take a quick break and let's come back and find out a little bit more. 

Welcome back everybody. My guest is Peter Fitzpatrick. Peter, that happens all the time. That happens all the time. But you could hear how my brain went there. It's Peter Fitzpatrick and we're kind of talking about emotional and social development in neurodiverse kids. When you and I first started talking, you said there's some research that you might want to reference. Yeah. When kids spend time and that kind of thing. Let's talk about what you've learned and what's important for our parents. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah, there was this fabulous study done at Yale. I think we'll share this in the show notes, but the study looked at how different activities help children. It was done with children that have autism open up socially to adults, and it compared three activities. The first was a drawing exercise. The second was time spent on a tablet, and the third was time spent with a robot that appeared autonomous. They were cheating. It was like a mirror that the kid couldn't see through, and they were controlling it. But it appeared to the child that the robot was autonomous. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
What does autonomous mean? That it was responsive to the child? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
It moves on its own. Okay. It had a brain of its own that it was using to exist in the world. Okay. It was a little dinosaur. So all it could do is walk, and what they found through that study is that if a child did a drawing exercise and then an adult entered the room that they didn't know, they wouldn't open up to the adult any more than if they didn't do the drawing exercise. The same goes for the tablet. If I remember correctly, it might have actually been worse after the tablet, but I'm not 100 percent on that. And then the third thing is when they use the robot for just five minutes, they would start talking to the adults in the room in a way they didn't after the two other exercises. And so there's something about robots, and I think probably if a dog had entered the room, you'd see a similar thing. This is part of the, I mean, a live dog. A real live dog, yeah. There's something about us where when we're moving, something comes into our real space, and it can't work on screen.

And we relate to it. It opens us up to others. I experienced a similar thing. And I don't know if you've ever gone on a walk with a dog in the park, but you'll talk to people. I bet when you talk to people that if you went there without your dog, you wouldn't talk too. And so there's this weird thing as humans, we will open up to others when these animals or robots. I think they sit in the same part of our brain. This is my conjecture or my like... 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
You're using the word robot. And I know that for me as a parent. I suspect that, for others listening, your notion of a robot and mine may not be very similar because I hear robots. I think "Danger, Danger," or "Robinsons," or, you know, "The Jetsons," or I see mechanical non-human, not humanoid like, you know, "Star Wars." When I hear robot, what I do, I don't think of something human-like, soft, or animal-like. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
I'm really glad you brought that up, and I think it makes me grateful for my co-founder. It's a woman named Robyn Campbell. She was adamant that it be cute and cuddly. And so yeah, the Fawn is the name of our company and the robot that we've created, and it is cuddly and cute and soft. So, yeah, it looks like a little baby fawn, a cartoon version of a baby deer. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So when you say robot, you mean for you, like what we're talking about is actually a stuffed animal that is able to interact in some way.

Peter Fitzpatrick
That's right. The study was done with a dinosaur, if I remember correctly, that was not soft and cuddly. But when we think about robots in this context, They're soft and cuddly for us. Yeah, that's right. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Okay. So, we're not talking about mechanical beings. We're talking about some entity that the kid can interact with that has them feeling like they're connecting is what I think I'm hearing you say. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
I think the crucial point is that they anthropomorphize it. It's tough work. Yeah. View it as having human emotion without it being a human. That's the key. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
If it's not a human, how does it help a child with social or emotional development? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
So, we've got two threads of conversation going. So there's this study, in which case it was just a dinosaur that could walk across the desk. If I remember correctly, I think that's right. Okay, speak or anything. And in that instance, we actually don't know why it works, we just know that it does. And so there's something deep in the brain that goes like, similar to a dog, in my view, where it's just like, oh, that's, that thing appears to be sad or happy or ambitious or curious. And there's something about being here in the room with me that makes me more open to you. We don't really know why, we just know.  

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And they haven't done that research with animals? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
They may have, it just wasn't done in the study. Yeah. I mean, certainly my own; that's where my bridge comes from, in my experience. Animals have a very similar effect. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, I have this strong memory of hanging out with my dog when I was a kid. My dog, I told my dog everything, right? And we wrote poetry together, and we, you know, whatever, like that. Yeah. I was a safe being. Yeah. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I mean, many of us form relationships with animals that make us feel safer. And then, if you want to switch the thread to what we're creating, you can think of it as an animal that has the capacity to speak. And so we've built a character, it's a Baby Fawn that comes from a magical forest. She has a best friend named Beanie the Bunny and a crush on a fox named Spark, and was sent to Earth to help a special child achieve their dreams. The child she was matched with, right? Right. And for every unit. So, every child gets one that's matched with them. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And are they all the same animal, the same thing, but the same item? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Like a new language to use to talk about these things. Yeah. They're, they're all baby deers. That's right. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And they all look alike. So, it's okay.

Peter Fitzpatrick
But they're individual beings within that. Right. It's not an animal, but that class of being. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, I was, I'm thinking back to the American Girl dolls when my kids were younger, where there were all these dolls and all these personalities and personas, and they didn't speak, but they each had energy and activity and things that they did. And so the kids would interact with them in a very interesting way. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think they developed trust. Yeah. And so what's interesting is that in our experience, and parents tell us this too, is that their kids will open up to Fawn in ways that they won't open up to their parents. So it's like the next step of that study. It's because if they tell us things that happened in their day to Fawn, they wouldn't tell their mom, or their mom tells us that they and that she won't share. But it's okay if their mom's in the room. So there's this really interesting dynamic where parents are using it to like develop intimacy with their kids because they, everybody, like they're in the same room. Mom overhears the conversation, and that's fine. Her daughter knows that they're in the same room, and then mom brings up the thing that was shared with Fawn, and they get to have a conversation about the conflict that happened on the playground or...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right, so it's because it's got this layer of distance. So, and it also allows the child to cultivate a trust, not just with fun, but also with the parent. It's almost like testing. If I tell Fawn and my parent doesn't freak out and react, then I can now feel safe talking to my parent. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Well, it's so interesting you bring that up because I've heard over and over again, actually, from moms that say like, "Oh, my daughter comes to me having rehearsed." So, I don't remember the specific issue, but imagine like, I don't know, they're going somewhere on the weekend. She doesn't want to go, or she has to wear something she doesn't want to wear, whatever the thing is. And I keep using daughters' examples, but boys use Fawn lots too, and they used to just come in a sort of tantrum or come with zero tact and deliver whatever the thing they want. And then all the burden is on the parent to be emotionally regulated. Yeah. Which ideally, we all would be, but it's hard. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
It doesn't always happen, right? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
The end of a long day, they won't like, whatever the spaghetti... 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
That's our realm. We do a lot of work on that. Just so you know. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Well, that's beautiful, important work. Yeah. If and when children talk to Fawn about it first, they've rehearsed it a little bit. Fawn's specifically designed to support the parent. So, they come sort of ready with the frame that I should help mom and dad here, but the frame that like what I need is important. And so they get to have a different conversation than without Fawn.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And what's the age group that this is typically for? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Well, that's a great question. So it's, we built it thinking age 6 to 12, but we keep finding older children using it, particularly like all the way up to 13 sometimes. Yeah. Those on the spectrum, particularly. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, I could see that. There's a whole other conversation we can't get into now, but like, how do you, how do you script an animal like that to be able to navigate the maturity of a 27-year-old or, you know, 20-year-old instead of the expectation of a seven-year-old? Is that a future issue to address? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Well, the gist of it is Robyn has read the Harry Potter books every night for the last three and a half years. She's read them front to back 20 times or whatever you would accomplish in that time period. And so, Harry Potter is a great example of something that appeals to all ages, just like it appeals to 10-year-olds.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I got another set of books for her to check out. What's that? The artist's TJ Klune, K-L-U-N-E, and she's written a couple books, or they've written a couple books called The Cerulean Chronicles, The House In The Cerulean Sea, and then I can't remember what the second book is called, it just came out in September of 2024. Beautiful, beautiful, and they've kind of positioned themselves as the anti-J. K. Rowling because it's very inclusive, accepting, tolerant, neurodiverse, and aware and all of that. So, another place to look for that kind of inspiration. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I'll pass it along to her. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, it's some of my favorite new books.

Peter Fitzpatrick
I think it's just if the story is and the character is designed properly, it will appeal to both. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, I could see that. Beautiful. Well, it is. It is a beautiful thing that you're doing. Your energy is lovely. I'm excited to find out more. Tell people out. They can find out more about you and the name of the company and those people who might want to find a Fawn in their Christmas or holiday world. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah, absolutely. So, if you want to see videos of kids playing with it, which is just super cute, it's fawn.friends on Instagram. So, F-A-W-N dot F-R-I-E-N-D-S, fawn.friends on Instagram. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And we'll put that in the show notes. Everybody makes it easy.

Peter Fitzpatrick
Awesome. And then our website is www.fawnfriends.com. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Fawnfriends dot com. And again, all of that will be in the show notes. And anything else that we haven't talked about that you want to share or anything we have that you want to highlight? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Just that whoever's listening to this, the fact that you're putting the effort into listening to this podcast means you're exceptional as a parent, and the work you're doing is so important. The work on yourself that you're doing is so important to show for your kid in the best way you can, and so just congratulations on making that choice to spend your hour or whatever this has been in that way. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I love that. You could not be speaking more our language. That's fabulous. So we always like to wrap with a favorite quote or motto. What's what's coming up for you today? 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Oh, this one's almost deep. The biggest motto in my life right now is "Put truth first." I actually got it tattooed on me recently, my only tattoo, which is a reminder. There's several levels to this, but the first level is the reminder that like my connection with the universe or the divine or the stability in me, the place that watches my ego go by is the like the most important connection in my life. And from that place, I can stably show up for everybody else around me. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
That is quintessentially putting your oxygen mask on first. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Existentially almost. Yeah. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Actually, it is. Yeah. I was hesitant. It's what came. I was hesitant to bring it up because it's a bit meta, but... 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
We do meta here. That's okay. I love it. Because a lot of what we're about in this community is that we have to pay attention to ourselves and we have to, you know, a lot of parents of neurodiverse kids feel like they have to, if they have a minute to spend a dollar to spend, they got to spend it on their kids. And what we know to be so true is when we slow down, we pay attention to ourselves, down-regulate our nervous systems, stay present, and do our own inner work. Which is what you're speaking to our ability to be present to our kids is so much more profound, and to your point earlier, what they need from us when we're with them is our presence more than anything else. They need us to absolutely be there with them, and it's not 

Peter Fitzpatrick
It might even be more your own regulation. If you're regulated in a calm place, it's weird how the rest of the room feels the same way.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, mirror neurons are kind of powerful that way, right? When you are in the presence of someone else, and you start to calm down and regulate your nervous system, other people's mirror neurons will pick that up. And so we can actually help our kids down-regulate by managing our own emotional reactivity, but it is not always an easy thing to do. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
So, I was gonna say the good news and the bad news, simple but not easy.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, "Put truth first," I love it. Peter, thank you. Thank you for what you do, and thanks for your commitment to your community, which is our community. I love the energy that you're bringing with it. It's beautiful, and I'm really really glad that We got a chance to meet you and talk. It's lovely. 

Peter Fitzpatrick
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. And I just hope you, I appreciate you helping us get out into the world. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
It's truly a pleasure. And to those of you listening, I will echo exactly what Peter just said. Which is thank you for what you're doing for yourself and for your kids. At the end of the day, you make an extraordinary difference. Take care, everybody. See you next week.