Elaine Halligan has an extraordinary story. Her journey to becoming one of the world’s leading parenting experts began with her own son’s difficulties at school and her determination to do whatever it took to allow the amazing potential she saw in him to flourish. But when it came to writing the book so many people had begged her to write, she didn’t know where to begin. How do you turn lived experience into a coherent story that will engage and move readers? And how can you make that story meaningful and helpful to them?
My Child Is Different tells how the boy written off by so many schools became the successful, grounded, entrepreneurial young man he is today, and what his parents learned in the process. In this podcast, Elaine explains how she began not by writing, but by talking out the story in partnership with Sam, and how deeply the process affected them both.
LINKS:
The Parent Practice: https://theparentpractice.com/
My Child’s Different on LoveReading: https://www.lovereading.co.uk/book/18475/My-Childs-Different-by-Elaine-Halligan.html
Elaine and Melissa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParentPractice
Alison on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bookstothesky
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
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Join the wait list for the next 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: https://alisonjones.leadpages.co/proposal-challenge/
Alison Jones: Hello and welcome to the Extraordinary Business Book Club, and I’m thrilled to be here today with Elaine Halligan. She is a parenting specialist, a director of The Parent Practice, and helps parents raise competent and confident children through parenting classes, private coaching, and keynote speaking in schools. She also delivers seminars to working parents in the corporate world, helping them find the holy grail of parenting, which is keeping calm, as anybody who is a parent will know. She readily appears on Sky News, speaks on BBC Radio, she’s quoted in the broadsheet press and in June 2016 she and her business partner, Melissa, were featured in the Mail on Sunday You magazine as two of the leading parenting experts in the UK. She contributes regularly to Smalish magazine, and she is the author of My Child’s Different, which was published by Crown House in August 2018. Welcome to the show, Elaine.
Elaine Halligan: Thank you so much. I’m delighted to be here.
Alison Jones: Oh, it’s so good to have you here. I know your story so well, but I just can’t wait to share it with everybody. Let’s start with that. Just tell us your story, because you did not start your working life as a parenting expert, did you?
Elaine Halligan: I didn’t. I started my working life having graduated in law from Edinburgh University, and I became a chartered accountant. It’s an interesting story in itself, my career path in terms of parenting, because as a young woman I definitely suffered from the perils of perfectionism, and I realise looking back that I was a complete people pleaser. The person I wanted to please the most was my father. Interestingly, when I finished school I really wanted to do psychology. I was fascinated with the topic of psychology. I was told, “No, no, no, Elaine, you’re very bright. You’re an academic. You’re going to be a lawyer,” so off I went without questioning anyone’s advice, least of all … Not thinking for myself or acting for myself, and I went to Edinburgh, and I did a law degree. It was only in my final year that I suddenly thought, “Oh, my god, I really want to travel the world.”
What I’d done is I’d just qualified, or just graduated, in Scottish law, which meant I really couldn’t practise at that time south of the border. When I researched it the only place in the whole world I could practise Scottish law was a South Pacific Island called Vanuatu.
Alison Jones: Random, is it not?
Elaine Halligan: It’s very random, and I can’t explain that. So, I kind of had a kind of panic attack, and I suddenly left and just deserted the law and went to South Africa and ended up working for Touche Ross out there. I came back and my father said to me, “Now you’ve done a year with Touche Ross, I think you should be a chartered accountant. “Oh okay, okay,” so I kind of spent 10 years of my professional life, in my early 20s and late 20s doing professional exams to kind of do law and be a chartered accountant, and then I ended up in corporate finance, and I really don’t think I was very good at any of these jobs. I certainly, certainly wasn’t playing to my strengths.
Then, as time goes on I met Tony in South Africa and got married, settled down, and we decided to have a family. I think the extent of our decision to have a family was, “How many children do you want? Is it private or state education?”
Alison Jones: What else would there be to discuss about having children?
Elaine Halligan: Exactly. I went into it kind of not eyes wide open at all, and that was when our first child was born, Sam, who is now 22. I had to completely recalibrate my whole life. The early years I found quite straightforward, actually fairly easy, but then things came really unstuck when Sam attended nursery, and it started quite quickly with the kind of phone calls and the meeting at the nursery door by the nursery teacher to say that Sam had had a ‘tricky day’. A ‘tricky day’ meant that he couldn’t listen, he wasn’t following instructions, he couldn’t sit still on carpet time, he was quite aggressive and a bit of a bully to the other children, and very quickly in my kind of parenting career, so to say, I realised that Sam was just a little different.
To cut a long story short, by the age of seven Sam had attended three different schools and been expelled from all of them, and very quickly I realised that our family life, my personal life, everything was in crisis because we had a child who was really challenging. We didn’t know at the time who was what we would call neurodiverse or atypical learner, but he was very quickly … It happened very quickly he was written off in society. He was announced that he was stupid, silly, naughty. He became that naughty child, and those labels stuck and very quickly life spiralled out of control. That was when I gave up my career as a chartered accountant, as a corporate financier, and I had to retrain as a behavioural specialist, because I had to completely recalibrate what was normal, and I was determined that somehow, somewhere we were just going to help this little lad, who I believed was a good boy, but that he was completely misunderstood, and I really wanted to help kind of unlock the potential and understand where on earth this behaviour was coming from.
I’m sorry, that’s quite a big introduction but it kind of tells you how I came into life as being a parenting specialist.
Alison Jones: I think we need to know more, though, because we want to know what happened. What did you learn that changed things, and how did things change?
Elaine Halligan: Sure. The first thing we learned was that Sam had some specific learning difficulties. Because he had an above-average IQ, and he presented as a highly intelligent, articulate child, everyone put down the behaviour, or the misbehaviour, to being naughty and nothing could be further from the truth. We firstly found out what the issues were, and we ended up in a place called CAMHS, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, and that’s when all the diagnostic testing started. We were told he was on the autistic spectrum, had Asperger’s, maybe a little bit of Attention Deficit Disorder. We were then told that he was oppositionally defiant, and finally a diagnosis came of Pathological Demand Avoidance.
Alison Jones: So pretty much the full set of acronyms.
Elaine Halligan: Oh my God, he was the alphabet kid. I think that was the first step to accessing some help and support, which is understanding what your child’s educational and social needs are. It became quite clear that we were dealing with a child in a syndrome mix, and actually there were numerous things going on which meant that when he was placed in a stressful situation, which actually was school, he actually wasn’t being a problem by misbehaving or by avoiding tasks, he was actually having a problem. So, I think that was the first step to us looking at Sam with a completely different set of eyes and realising, actually, that this little kid wasn’t misbehaving on purpose, he wasn’t doing it to press people’s buttons, he was doing it genuinely because he had a problem.
That was when Sam was out of school at seven and spent two years out of school, and we had to go to a Time-out Behavioural Centre where I started to completely re-learn, and my husband, too, how we connected and communicated with him. That was when the magic started to happen, because I learned something called Positive Parenting, which is really all about how to connect, how to communicate, how to be positive, but also how to be firm, because I think many parents these days really struggle with what I call the parenting pendulum. Do you know what I mean by that, Alison?
Alison Jones: I know exactly what you mean. You’re scared to be too firm so you become too soft and the child doesn’t know what’s going on in the end.
Elaine Halligan: Exactly. We were definitely pendulum parenting. One minute I was giving in in order to avoid embarrassment in a public place. So, rather than have that melt down or temper tantrum in the supermarket I would give him the donut, or the sugary snack, and the sugar in itself, obviously, escalated the behaviour.
Alison Jones: That’s a real short-term win.
Elaine Halligan: A short-term win. Other times I’d be coming down on him like a ton of bricks and punishing, and sending him to his room, and shouting, and doing all the things that inherently we just know don’t work, but I just didn’t know what else to do. So, the minute I started to understand that Sam needed our support, Sam needed our help, that his emotional backpack was just overflowing throughout the day, was the minute that we started to talk to him differently, to listen to him differently, and we started to build up his self-worth, and we started to unlock that potential that I sensed was there. But, when you’re dealing with a child who’s different, or difficult, or challenging it can be really hard just to stop yourself and think about what’s going on. Like an iceberg model, you need to look at what’s going on beneath the water level. That’s really hard to do, Alison, because most of us just look at the tip of the iceberg, which is the behaviour that we don’t like.
Alison Jones: And particularly the point of it that’s jabbing into us at that moment.
Elaine Halligan: Oh my god, that’s the point that really presses your button.
Alison Jones: You and I could talk about this absolutely all day, because I’m in a similar… I have a special needs child, this is very, very close to both our hearts. I do want to talk about the writing though, so just to finish off the story, tell us about Sam these days.
Elaine Halligan: So Sam is now 22. We managed to get him back into education at the age of nine, and to finish the story off, he managed to find an environment where they understood him, to really find his strengths. As he found his strengths, and we parented differently, his self-esteem improved and actually he finished school as head boy, which was just remarkable for all of us to believe that this kid who was predicted would never amount to anything, would never even be able to sit exams, managed to finish his schooling, became a bit of a leader, set up his own business, and actually took himself off to university. The story has a very happy ending.
The reason I decided to write it was because during this time I then met Melissa Hood, and I joined her in her business which is now still running and it’s called The Parent Practice. As I became a parenting specialist, and as I coached and facilitated parenting classes and groups, people would hear about my story. Everyone kept saying, “Oh my God, there’s a book in there,” to which my response was, “I am not an author. I have very little attention to detail, I have the attention span of a gnat; there is absolutely no way in a million years I could sit down and write a book.” But, people kept telling me, “There’s a story. You need to write the story.”
The other excuse I used was, “No, no, no, it’s not right to write about Sam. He’s just a young adult, he’s just entering into his adult years. If we are going to do this I am going to wait until he’s 21, until he has more comprehension and understanding, and I’m going to ask for his permission,” but still I kept putting off this idea. Alison, it was actually down to you that the book came to fruition, because I think if I’m right, and you may have to help me out here, you were trialling a new product?
Alison Jones: That’s right. I had this idea… It was Sherry Bevan’s launch, wasn’t it, that we met at, and you had talked about your story. I said, “Well, it’s funny you should say that, because I’m wondering about this book elicitation package that I’m planning.” Which, I have to say, if anybody listening to this “I want some of that,” I’m afraid I don’t do it, because it turns out to be incredibly time consuming and hard work. But, in this case, oh my goodness I’m so glad we did it.
Elaine Halligan: So what Alison did was, you interviewed Sam and I for the best part of a year, over about 10 one-hour interviews, and recorded them. We got transcripts. Suddenly I started to have the kind of meat and bones of the story, because you forget a lot. By interviewing Sam it was absolutely fascinating to get his insight into some of the things that had happened to him over his education. It was a very emotional journey. I remember at one point we had to stop. We had to stop because Sam got quite distressed at some of the actions he had taken, and he truly … What was incredible was he truly felt so remorseful at some of the things he did. He was then quite honest and open with me and said that he thought dad and I had got a few things wrong, and that we’d made some mistakes and, indeed, if I’m really honest about it I think we did make some mistakes in terms of some of the educational provision we sought for him.
But, I can tell you what, it was a really cathartic process. I think by doing that process the book suddenly came … It was moulded into something, because without that process I’m not sure I’d have known, quite frankly, where to start.
Alison Jones: I think that’s the interesting piece, isn’t it, because what you and I did between us, I talked to you initially about the big picture, went away and came back with a kind of a structure. It was a very chronological structure, but broke it into different periods of Sam’s life. For each of those chapters I set out a list of questions. It’s not magic, but actually it’s quite simple, but what it did was gave you a structure, an outline, a process, by which you could start telling the story and organising it together.
I think anybody listening to this, that’s actually something you can do for yourself in a sense, or you can get somebody who knows you reasonably well to help you with. In a sense once you have that, the container into which to put each bit, then you’ve got something you can start with.
Elaine Halligan: It’s all about the munchable chunks.
Alison Jones: Munchable chunks, that’s it.
Elaine Halligan: The munchable chunks, because whether a task seems overwhelming, which I can promise you writing this book for me was completely overwhelming task as a first-time never-considered-to-be author. But suddenly, very quickly, it started to take shape as you asked the questions, as the structure kind of organically fell out, and very quickly I got very, very excited about writing the book. Then I did something which I don’t regret to this day, but at the time I kind of thought, “Am I doing the right thing?” I posted on Facebook to all my tribe on The Parent Practise page, and my personal page, that I was going to write a book. It was January 2017. I said, “I am going to write this book and I am going to try and seek a traditional book publishing deal.”
I’ll never forget, Alison, the majority of people were incredibly supportive, cheering me along, praising my courage and bravery, and yet there was one dissenting voice that said, “Lot’s of people say they’re going to write a book, but it’s a very hard thing to do.” That little one dissenting voice really pressed my button, actually, and I thought, “Yep, I have said to the world what I am going to do. I am now committed. Think of the embarrassment if I actually don’t get this thing done,” and so I made myself accountable to thousands of people out there in the social media world, and, by god, that is what had me focused and determined.
Alison Jones: You know, I could not agree more, and that’s exactly why I started my podcast. I started The Extraordinary Business Book Club solely initially to just get myself out there saying I’m going to do it and, therefore, I had to do it because I couldn’t stand the embarrassment if I didn’t. You know, we don’t have to be proud of this motivation, it just has to work.
Elaine Halligan: So, it was an interesting exercise. Then what I did, the second thing I did, was kind of look at my day job, because we’ve got day jobs, and a lot of people listening to this podcast they won’t have the indulgence of being able to write for hours a day, so I had to kind of really think about how I was going to carve out my time. Every Wednesday morning, because I work a lot of evenings doing school talks, every Wednesday you will find me on the golf course, and I am not embarrassed to admit that. That is my half day off, Wednesday mornings, golf course. In the afternoon I then came back and wrote for four hours and then at the weekend I set aside one whole day at the weekend to write. I think on average I was probably writing 12 hours a week. I know lots of other authors talk about writing daily. I just couldn’t fit that into my regime, so I think you’ve got to do what works for you.
Alison Jones: Absolutely.
Elaine Halligan: And then I put my out of office on. Again, that held me accountable, because if anyone emailed me on a Wednesday I would say, “Please forgive me but I am as far as humanly possible keeping out of my inbox because I have scheduled a four-hour period to write on my book, My Child’s Different,” and it was a little bit of a marketing thing, as well. Then it attracted and generated some interest and some questions, and I think it was that that just held me truly accountable to kind of start the process.
Alison Jones: I actually included that tip in my book because it was such a smart tip. Put it on your out of office. It’s that dual purpose… as you say, it’s marketing, it gets people involved. It’s a great … If somebody’s not going to answer you immediately you want to know it’s because they’re writing a book, because that’s exciting.
Elaine Halligan: People do get excited when you say that you’re a first-time author don’t they?
Alison Jones: They do. It’s funny. The book has a real kudos and value still in our culture. We do get excited about it. Long may that last, because, as your dissenting voice said, “A lot of people say they’re going to write a book, very few people actually do it.” To have you out there committed to it publicly, yes people are excited about that.
Tell us what it’s been like. Obviously, it’s just been published in August. What was it like as you came up to publication, and what is it like now that it’s out in the world? Is there anything that surprised you about that experience?
Elaine Halligan: I think the biggest thing that surprised me is actually I thought the writing of the book would be the hardest thing to do, …
Alison Jones: Ha ha, hollow laugh.
Elaine Halligan: … and I’ve had a bit of a revelation, it’s the marketing of the book that’s quite hard. I found the marketing hard, but I was really supported by my publisher, Crown House Publishing, who came up with a very detailed marketing plan. The planning surprised me as to how in-depth it was and how much time it’s taken, so I have to be honest about that. What has surprised me, though, is a whole new audience. Again, I have to be honest that I originally wrote the book as part of the engine of a business. I thought, “hmm, this book would be interesting. People are asking me about it, and given my clients are interested in the story, I know it’s going to become a powerful business tool to be able to tell my story and serve the business at the same time.”
So, although I may have started it as a kind of cathartic, therapeutic thing, actually from a business point of view, it’s been unprecedented, because what’s happened is a whole new market has opened up, which is teachers, what I didn’t expect when I wrote this book, because it’s a parenting book. Every chapter has a section from Melissa Hood, my business partner, on the practical parenting piece; what I didn’t anticipate was actually that for the last five weeks My Child’s Different has become a number one Amazon best seller in category, which is teaching students with special educational needs, and I didn’t expect that. I kind of thought it would slot into the general parenting/child development category. So, the whole new audience is teachers, and that’s really surprised me, so that’s fantastic for making a business point of view, because now we’re putting out to a whole new marketplace.
Alison Jones: And all the extra pieces of The Parent Practice can now feed into that market, as well. How exciting.
Elaine Halligan: I deal with schools but it hasn’t, you know, In our database, I would say 80% of our database and tribe are probably parents. I’m hoping that that statistic will now change. So, that surprised me. Marketing is hard, and then a new tribe’s occurred, which is just wonderful, positive news.
Alison Jones: Isn’t that brilliant that your book can go out into the world and then it has a life of its own really. You can plan all you like but stuff’s going to happen that you didn’t expect, and isn’t that brilliant?
Elaine Halligan: I don’t know who decides that. I think it’s the Amazon algorithms, which I fail to comprehend or understand.
Alison Jones: They are a riddle, wrapped inside a mystery, inside an enigma, yep.
Elaine Halligan: I don’t know who decides which category it sits in, but it sits in the educational category.
Alison Jones: As a publisher you specify BIC and BISAC Codes, which are kind of industry standard classifications. Amazon takes those and it looks and it goes, “Yeah, well and, and it sort of munges it with its own…
Elaine Halligan: That’s what happened to me.
Alison Jones: Yes, exactly, and there’s a sort of organic thing. Yeah, it can be absolutely mysterious why things go into categories, but also quite serendipitous, as you found out. That’s really good.
Elaine Halligan: It’s been a bit more emotional than I thought, actually, Alison. Just as I’ve done book launch events and things I’ve actually read a couple of extracts from the book. I will nail it in time, but I’m finding that experience quite emotional reading from the book still.
Alison Jones: In a sense I hope you never do nail that, because it’s real, isn’t it, and my goodness the emotion of going back and re-living that stuff, this is so fundamental to your life.
Elaine Halligan: I think people really get that, and what we’re finding is that the book is appealing not just to parents who have different children but to any parent who just worries about what the future looks like. I think most of us as parents worry now. The stakes are high. We worry about emotional well-being. We worry about mental health. We worry about will our children be able to afford to live? Will they be able to afford to acquire a property? I think the book has reached out to much bigger audience than I thought, because it’s about looking at your child and unlocking their potential based on their strengths, and ensuring that … Mo parent, I don’t know any parent who doesn’t want this for their child, that they can enter into adult life just feeling good about themselves for who they are, and feeling competent and confident.
Alison Jones: I think that is really important, because the skills that you had to develop in response to the crisis that you found yourself in with Sam don’t just work for children with special needs, for different children. Actually, they work across the board, it’s just that you were put in so much more extreme position than most. Obviously, I read the book several times, and I can tell you that the stuff in there is relevant to all children. As you say, it’s just that most parents don’t necessarily find themselves at that crisis point.
Elaine Halligan: Those skills, Alison, if I’m being really honest, they work on all ages from two to 82, and they work on my husband.
Alison Jones: … and also with my husband nicely, but don’t tell him.
Elaine Halligan: My eldest has just turned 56, and they still work on him.
Alison Jones: Amazing.
Elaine Halligan: That’s my husband.
Alison Jones: I know, I got that. I was thinking, Gosh, you’re looking good on it. Now, Elaine, if there’s somebody listening to the show who perhaps finds themselves where you were, with that sense that there’s a book here but I’m damned if I don’t have to get it out, what would be your best tip for them?
Elaine Halligan: Oh, it’s got to be seek support, seek support. I am a big believer in just seeking help. I’m a big believer in personal development, and I’m a big believer that it takes more than one person to help you be successful. So, what I did do is I started off on this journey doing your 10-book book proposal challenge. 10-day, yeah, 10-day business book proposal challenge, which was really, it was life changing, it really was because suddenly I started to get clarity on what I wanted, who the market was, what the strapline was, and suddenly you start to visualise it, and visualisation is very, very powerful. I then moved up to the Boot Camp, so we started working not just on the book but in the book, as well. From a very early stage in the process you’re thinking about the marketing and how to get your message out there. Then, finally, I joined your book Mastermind with our Fab Four.
Yeah, those processes, without that I don’t think I could have done it, and I think if you’re sitting there thinking there is no reason to access support, you’ve got to be one determined, self-motivated person to kind of research all the stuff that goes into a good book. There’s lots of people out there who’ve written books that have literally fallen into the ether within the first few weeks of launch, and that’s because there’s so much more that goes into the book than just the writing. It’s the marketing, it’s the message behind it, and without clarity of that all that hard work in writing a book may well just disappear. I think we’re the most prolific nation for writing books, aren’t we?
Alison Jones: I think we probably are, actually, yes. The number of books per head in the UK I think is the top in the world, it’s astonishing, disproportionately so…
Elaine Halligan: Disproportionate, so in order to get your book really noticed I think you have to be really thoroughly aware and skilled, and I have learned so much in the last 18 months about marketing a book. It would be to get support.
Alison Jones: Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant recommendations. Thank you. I would like people … I know we haven’t really been talking about business books per se, although, obviously, your book does relate very closely to your business, but what would your recommendation be for a business book or perhaps a self-development book, that you think everybody should read who’s listening?
Elaine Halligan: Gosh, there are so many, aren’t there? There are so many fabulous books out there. I think Matthew Syed’s Bounce is a really, really useful good book, and it’s very pertinent to what we experienced with Sam. He talks in Bounce … He’s the ex-professional table tennis player. He talks about talent as being a result of just thousands of hours of purposeful practise, so he says that it’s not necessarily innate in you, but you just need to put in the effort and have the right attitude. I think that book has so much synergy with what we teach and deliver at The Parent Practice. We always talk about how important it is to praise not for the end result but to look for the journey that went into the end result, and to help your child have that quality of persevering and developing a growth mindset. I think his book comes up with some really fabulous ideas that it’s all about purposeful practice. He says that talent can’t be taught in the classroom, and I really, really believe that.
Was it Mark Sawyer who said, “I never let schooling get in the way of my children’s education?” Is that?
Alison Jones: It sounds like him, yes.
Elaine Halligan: I never let schooling get in the way of my children’s education, and Syed talks like that, too. He says, “Talent cannot be taught in the classroom. It’ not something your born with. It must be lived and learned. It emerges through practise, and child prodigies don’t have unusual genes, they have unusual upbringing.” So, the book it reaches out to anyone who wants to become expert and wants evidence that it’s all about their experience and practise. If you want to be world class at something you have to embrace failure. All these concepts are absolutely key for what we deliver in parenting, too. I think it’s a great book, and it’s a very inspiring book. I love it, and it talks at length about how to help you develop this growth mindset and not have a fixed mindset.
Alison Jones: Superb recommendation. Thank you. I should add, as well, you probably know, as well, Matthew Syed wrote the book to kids You Are Awesome, which is more aimed at them and just a brilliant book to actually give your child to get them understanding those lessons.
Elaine Halligan: It’s doing ever so well. I must get a copy of that. It’s just the title that put me off.
Alison Jones: Oh no, don’t let it put you off. My son loves it.
Elaine Halligan: Okay. No, I will. I’ll look at that. He’s done really well in this space, and I think delivering a children’s book on the back of this was just inspired, actually, and just genius.
Alison Jones: We need more like that, actually, because I think there aren’t enough books like that for kids. You know, the parents are taking it all in, but it’s really good to put it in language that children can understand, very friendly look on the page. It’s brilliant.
Elaine Halligan: Good recommendation. Thank you.
Alison Jones: Vice versa. Now, if people want to find out more about you, more about The Parent Practice and more about My Child is Different, where should they go?
Elaine Halligan: So, we have a website called theparentpractice.com, so you can have a little peek around there. If you want to sign up there we have a wonderful kind of download of 10 top tips to a happy, calmer, easier life. I don’t know any parent who reads that strapline and doesn’t want any of that. We offer a lot of live events. We have about 12 gigs every week going on somewhere in the community, in schools, in corporate. Yes, take a peek around there. In terms of the book My Child is Different, I love this new website. Have you come across Love Reading?
Alison Jones: Yes, and do you know I found it the other day. I haven’t really explored it much. I’m just looking at it and going, “How does this compare with GoodReads?”
Elaine Halligan: Visually, I love it because visually it looks fabulous. For some reason Love Reading have taken on my book as book of the month last month.
Alison Jones: Fantastic.
Elaine Halligan: So, I would encourage everyone to go and have a look at Love Reading. Type in My Child’s Different and some of the review comments there will just bring tears to your eyes. So Love Reading is similar to Good Reads, but I think they’ve re-launched it, actually, and I just think visually it looks a fabulous site and full of great reviews. Of course, there’s Amazon. The book was out of stock last week. I think it’s back in stock now, but you can certainly buy the book on Amazon and from all good bookshops, as well.
Alison Jones: Fantastic. Well, it’s been such a pleasure talking to you, Elaine. Thank you and thank you for sharing that story with us.
Elaine Halligan: My pleasure. Take care.