Not Your Average Autism Mom

Roughly 50% of our children with autism are likely to wander or elope so many families live with the fear of wandering or elopement every day.  When you have a child who is at risk for elopement, it directly impacts your entire family. You are often limited in the activities you are able to participate in outside of the home due to the fear of wandering. You have to take extreme measures to p...

How you see yourself is creating your entire life. Think about it, do you spend any time at all thinking about what you think about yourself? Most women just think that is who they are but the truth is, you can change your thoughts about yourself and when you change how you think about yourself and what you are capable of, guess what happens, everything outside of you changes. You have to like you...

Today’s topic is a direct result of what some of our members have been going through recently and that is making really difficult decisions. I am adding in a few other things along the way in hopes that this might just be the pep talk that you didn't even realize that you needed. From early intervention decisions to educational decisions, to medical decisions, therapies, social situations, and the...

In this episode, I am going to focus specifically on how Positive behavior support (PBS) can be effective for our kids. Whether it is utilizing a Positive Behavior Intervention Support (PBIS) or a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) or whatever type of plan your child’s education program or school team puts together.  The point is that it can absolutely improve your child’s behavior across setti...

Having boundaries will help your child navigate their world and give them an understanding of how they can easily meet those expectations. Boundaries are essentially understanding and respecting the needs of others and today, I am talking specifically about your boundaries as their parent. First, you have to decide what your goal is for setting boundaries. What is the outcome that you are hoping t...

Our kids love predictability and repetition because it gives them a sense of security. Most of our lives revolve around familiar routines, right? We have created these routines to help our children feel safe because I mean, that is just what we do.  We don’t want them to be anxious so as a natural solution, we worked hard to make their environment as predictable as possible. Resistance to cha...

In this episode, we review the importance of incorporating functional skills and a functional curriculum in our children's daily lives.   A functional skill is a skill that a person needs to live independently and a functional curriculum focuses on the life skills a student needs for independent living.  Teaching our children how to function in the world is just as important if not more...

So many things along our autism parenting journey focus on our child’s impairments so today, I wanted to talk about how their relative strengths can play a critical role in helping them compensate for their deficits.   I’m going to dive deep into the importance of understanding how our memory works and more specifically, how their memory works which I think is fascinating.   Rote learnin...

We know is that in autism their repetitive and fixated behaviors are generally their strategies for reducing the chaos and minimalizing their overload by seeking the predictability and routine of sameness. These are all of their attempts to decrease their overwhelm from the stimulation and provide some sort of order to the confusing overwhelming world they are in. Our children struggle with being...

Special education teachers are often tasked with unparalleled challenges over mainstream teachers because rather than developing one single lesson plan, they are having to develop unique plans for every student that aligns with each of their student’s IEP’s. When you think about special education we are often talking about a vast range of different ages, interests, and abilities. Teaching our kids...

In this episode, I talk in-depth about the differences in tantrums and meltdowns.  Their behaviors may look similar but it is important for us as parents to be able to identify the differences so that we know how to best help them.   With a tantrum, the child is generally choosing to engage in the behavior because of their want for something or escaping something that they don’t want. Th...

For most of us, it’s just plain difficult to know when our expectations of our children are unreasonable, right?  I've heard more times than I would like to admit, "but he or she has autism".  In this episode, I am going to talk about why that in itself is never a good reason or answer.   So how do we know if our expectations are realistic? The reality is that if your child is havin...

Many children with autism find the demands of school and the school environment almost unbearable which leads to “school avoidance or refusal”. This is when a child gets very upset about going to school and won’t or can’t go. This isn’t a clinical diagnosis; it is simply a name for an emotional and/or behavioral problem. As our child’s parent, we have a legal obligation to educate our children, wh...

For many of us, maybe even you, speech delay was one of the first things that we were concerned about in our child’s development. For our children with autism not only are they delayed in their speech, but they are often delayed in other areas of development including initializing communication using eye contact, or gestures like pointing or shaking their head. They also may lack eye contact, not...

A new school year can be very stressful for our children with autism.  There are new people to meet, new routines to learn, and all the while having to navigate school and classes and noisy lunchrooms. Communicating with your child’s teacher is critical to your child’s success at school and in the classroom.  You can be a tremendous resource that can help ensure your child has a smooth t...

The majority of people with autism do use spoken language but few of them use it in the same way as individuals without autism.  The reason that this is so important for you to understand is that often our kids are often communicators rather than conversationalists and teaching conversation skills will likely be something that you will continually have to work on with your child if language i...

The death of a loved one, a tragedy in the world, someone we love getting diagnosed with a terminal illness, none of these our easy conversations. Our goal as Mom is to protect our children right, we want to shield them from the things that will be difficult for them, of course, that is normal, but you and I both know that it isn’t reality. Part of what makes it difficult to discuss a tragic situa...

So many of us, including me, struggle to figure out HOW to connect with our kids.  Feeling like we don't have a bond and sometimes even questioning if they are capable to "really" love us or if they would miss us if we weren't here tomorrow.  I know those thoughts, because I have had those thoughts so if you have had those thoughts, this episode is for you! Talk to them even if it doesn’...

Communication is the pathway to navigating the world we live in. We communicate our wants and needs and likes and dislikes. We communicate to share information and use it to build relationships. Children with autism often have difficulty developing language skills and understanding what others are communicating to them.  Not only do they struggle with verbal communication but also non-verbal...

Not every child who has autism needs to have a guardian when they become 18. Having a diagnosis of autism does not equal incompetence.   In most states, a parent is deemed to be the legal guardian of his or her child until the child turns 18. Until 18, parents have the legal authority to make decisions (medical, financial, etc.) for their child. As soon as your child turns 18, your parental a...

As a parent of a child with autism, we have many challenges along the way that can affect not only our mental well-being but often our physical and social well-being are impacted too. Parents who don’t learn healthy coping strategies are at increased risk of higher anxiety and even depression. In today's episode, I discuss practical things that you can do to lessen your stress levels and show up b...

For most people, context is just a known thing. I mean it's like it is just inherent for us to know that everything is relative and depends on the context, situation, or setting which determines how we act or react or what we say or don’t say, right? Well, imagine, if you are only able to take in one piece of information at a time. This is a daily struggle for people with autism. There are so many...

Most people know or think they know and/or understand Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) but have you ever heard of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD)?  The differences may just surprise you and there may be a lightbulb moment or two in this episode. Many behavioral symptoms of autism and OCD actually overlap with each other.  The reality is that the symptoms are similar b...

Emotions are difficult to understand and interpret for all of us, and each of us demonstrates our emotions differently but for our kids on the spectrum, it is so much more challenging.  For most of our kids, these intense emotions are very unpredictable, scary, and overwhelming. We have to teach them how to appropriately respond to their emotions and this isn’t an easy task and won’t happen o...

How often can you have an IEP meeting?  Should I get a meeting notice?  Can I request a specific staff member not be part of my child's IEP meeting?  Can I record the meeting?  What if I can't attend the day the school scheduled the meeting? Does my child have to attend the meeting?  What if I don't sign the IEP?  My school said they don't provide the service my child...