Hello and welcome to Get Your Globe Up. I'm joined today by Penny Windsor, author of Tender,

The Imperfect Art of Caring. To celebrate National Carers Week, I wanted to shine a light and

celebrate the unpaid, unsung estimate of 9 million carers in the UK. Penney's book is a guide

for all carers that she describes as the book

she wished someone had given her when she first became a carer to her mother in her early

teens and when her son Arthur was diagnosed with autism and she became a carer once more.

On today's episode, we spoke all about her experience as a carer,

how she has learned to accept her son's autism,

what it's like raising a young carer in her daughter, Agnes,

and how we can all care for our carers.

I really hope you enjoy listening to this episode.

Let's bring on the wonderful Penny.

Welcome Penny to the podcast. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. No, I'm absolutely honored to have you here.

I'm very excited to be chatting you today. You've written quite extensively about the process of realizing that your son,

Arthur, was developing differently to his peers. I'd love to know a little bit about your experience

when you were first seeking support and any advice you give other mothers in similar situations.

Well, it was interesting actually because I had remembered

my mother saying to me when I was little, I'm the youngest, and I have two older brothers,

and they were really shocked when I came along because I did everything so much quicker and

faster than my brothers did. And then the same thing happened with my two nephews as well.

They took a while to kind of get talking and do things. So when my son wasn't speaking at his two-year check, I just wasn't worried about the not speaking at all. I was not, I would say, a panicked mother. We were having trouble. We were having a lot of different troubles. But he was my first child

and I didn't really know what was normal toddler behaviour and what was some more extreme

...