Legit Parenting
Legit Parenting
The Vital Role of Community in Neurodivergent Success
Our special guest, Mary Judy, brings her vast experience as an advocate for neurodiverse families to the table. Mary Judy shares her compelling journey and the challenges her son faced despite his academic success. She discusses the importance of creating individualized support teams for those who may not outwardly appear neurodiverse but still require assistance. Mary Judy's story is a powerful testament to resilience and the necessity of tailored support systems for fostering independence in neurodivergent individuals.
About Mary Judy: I grew up in a Neurodiverse Family and that is my sense of normal. Not surprisingly, I married a man with a neurodivergent mind, and we have our own Neurodiverse Family. I was extremely fortunate to have the example of my mother Margaret’s support for my father and my brother who were the most impacted in our household while I was growing up. She was completely alone in her advocacy for our family, but she just did what was right because she loved us. My mom protected us all fiercely and meekly, using her gut to decide what was right and what was wrong. She was brilliant! After her death in 2008, my son was diagnosed with learning disabilities (2E) and eventually with Asperger’s Syndrome. When he was in high school, I realized that his father too has Asperger’s. There are only two choices you have when faced with this kind of knowledge; you can go all in or you can run. I went all in with the help of a wonderful network of friends and supporters that I had created for myself while raising my kids, and the example of my amazing mother who always showed me the way to love people unconditionally and with her whole being.
Now I’m helping other families bridge the gap to independence and adulthood professionally. When challenged daily with how to help my clients without enabling them, I think to myself “What would Margaret do?”
With the birth of our second child just prior to Y2K, I left the tech world to manage our significant real estate investments and educated myself about the residential design business and real estate management. We divested our North Carolina real estate holdings in 2005 to move to Chicago. There I earned my Illinois real estate and certified property management licenses. I renovated and flipped our family residences and managed the sales and renovation of client properties.
During these years our second child was identified as Twice Exceptional, eventually leading to an Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis. I sought training through the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Wrightslaw Special Education Law and Advocacy, and became a contracted Parent Advocate for the Illinois State Board of Education. With my neighbors we started the Riverside Area Inclusion Network (RAIN) to support families and work with the school systems to create more inclusive educational and community opportunities for our exceptionally identified children. Public educators and the state systems were just adapting to this new normal and by high school we moved our exceptional child to a Catholic single sex high school with wonderful supports, and MOST importantly, a sense of belonging not experienced anywhere before. A wonderful priest (to whom I will always be grateful) also helped me to see that my husband is on the spectrum. This insight saved our marriage!
Recognizing a family dream to live in the Rockies, we relocated to Colorado in 2018. Here I went to work for state licensed program approved service agencies (PASA) to learn the supportive ropes for the Neurodiverse community. I earned my Association of Community Rehabilitative Educators (ACRE) certification, and have built a network within the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE), the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing (HCPF), the Department of Vocational Rehabil
Welcome to Legit Parenting, where imperfect parents build resilient kids and families. A place to learn real solutions based in brain science to fit your unique parenting style. We show you how to tackle today's challenges for children and teens. Remember, when it comes to raising kids, you just have to be this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg. I've been a child and family therapist for nearly 40 years. I'm the business owner of one of Colorado's largest private practices, best-selling author and father of four. In my fathering world, I've been a birth dad, a single parent, a step-parent, an adoptive parent, a parent of exceptional students and a grandparent of two. By my side is Sydney Moreau, our production manager and mother of three ages preschool through 18. Together, we bring you a guilt-free parenting perspective with solutions that actually fit into your real life. Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg, along with my producer and mother of three. Now, today, we're going to continue to address the needs of neurodivergent students, children, families.
Speaker 1:Last week we had Leila Kimmel on, who was just awesome talking to us about well, it's his obstructive disorder in females and it just was an amazing discussion. She is so knowledgeable and a couple of takeaways I wrote down as we talked is that these students have the same drives as other teen females do, but they don't understand the bigger picture of what's going on because of their autism. So they have higher rates of sexual assault because of that. And it just it blew me away when she said, yeah, I take the girls to the mall and then I hire an actor to try to come up and start talking to one and see if he can lure them away and then, as soon as he does, then we stop and go. Okay, did you see the red signs? And I'm like, whoa, I don't know if you can do that or not, but I was like, go get them. She's on the cutting edge. And also how 25% of females with ASD identify as non-binary and we talked about, yeah, because their social brains work more like guys' social brains and they feel more comfortable around men, tend to go into male engineering, these kind of areas and don't feel they fit with other females. So that was just a great discussion.
Speaker 1:Now we're going to continue on that same theme today, but I thought I'd just start with talking about what when I say neurodivergent neuroexceptional is another term you'll hear, or you'll hear neurotypical, and basically we're looking at students whose brains work differently and don't always fit the traditional model of how schools work and what you're supposed to be doing and not doing. So that would include students with autism spectrum disorder, learning disabilities, adhd, tourette's syndrome and various other conditions where they learn different and oftentimes socialize differently, and that's the umbrella term. So then the question is what do you do if you have one of those kids and Lela talked about how to get testing, but who do you turn to for extra support and how to take advantages of resources? Or, as I told our guest this morning when she got on, that today is the 34th anniversary of President Bush signing the Americans with Disabilities Act to prevent discrimination based on physical or mental health disabilities, and that has been a game changer for millions and millions of Americans over the last 34 years, where they can lead productive, they can work and lead productive lives and be part of a community, and, like we have a Kroger store, king Soopers, I think that's part of Kroger, I'm pretty sure and you'll see young people with disabilities working there, doing the bags, whatever cards, and they're able to have meaningful employment, so that was just a game changer. And they're able to have meaningful employment, so that was just a game changer.
Speaker 1:Now, our guest today is a fountain of knowledge for how to garner resources for your child or your teen or your family. And I've known of her for a long time and I didn't officially meet her until about two months ago and we had a dinner party and a professional discussion. We had a dinner party and a professional discussion and these were all people that worked with neurodivergent students, therapists, ots, everybody's there and they were having a discussion and a lot of the questions were related to accessing services, and our guest today was the woman who kept answering all the questions and I'm like I'm going to meet her and get her on the show because she knew so much. So I'll read a quick little bit of her bio as an introduction. But that's the backstory on how we hooked up and I was just so impressed by her knowledge base and how to help families get the services you're entitled to by law, and that's a really important piece.
Speaker 1:Mary Judy grew up in a neurodiverse family, which shaped her understanding of what is normal. Following this tradition, she married a man with a neurodivergent mind and together they have created their own neurodiverse family. Mary was fortunate to have her mother, margaret, as an example of unwavering support and advocacy for their family. Despite being alone in her office, margaret fiercely and meekly protected and guided the family with her brilliant instincts. And I'm going to let her tell us more about her backstory, but further on her bio. Recognizing a family dream to live in the Rockies, they relocated to Colorado in 2018.
Speaker 1:Mary worked for a state-licensed program approved services agency. To learn the supportive ropes for the neurodiverse community, she earned her Association of Community Rehabilitative Educators Boy, this is pushing my dyslexia up in certification and built a network within the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, the Colorado Office of Employment First, the Association for People Supporting Employment First and the PASA and Private Provider Network. Whoa, right there, that tells you she has a lot of networking, a lot of experience. The greatest need she discovered in the culturally accepting region is for those who do not look disabled and appear to be getting by, and we talked to Lila last week about how many of the females can mask that they don't get what's going on. They just smile and nod their head and you wouldn't catch on out of their head and you wouldn't catch on. Mary has made it her mission to help these individuals attain their highest potential by assisting in the creation of their individualized support teams and access to services.
Speaker 1:Today, mary helps other families bridge the gap to independence and adulthood professionally. In her daily work, she often reflects on her mother's legacy, asking herself what would Margaret do? That's beautiful. This guiding principle helps her support her clients without enabling them, fostering independence and resilience in the face of neurodiversity. And Mary, welcome to the show. And it sounds like your mom was a mom on a mission On a mission. Moms on a mission get a lot done. I've known a lot.
Speaker 2:We do, we do and that's actually how I really got into this. If you had asked me before I became a mom myself if I wanted to be like my mother, I would have told you absolutely not. I always adored my mother. She's a really wonderful person. She passed away about 17 years ago now and it was one of the hardest challenges I ever dealt with. Powerhouse she was and her ability to work within a system and get things done was really unparalleled by any I've ever seen. But the way that she did it because the systems didn't exist back in the days that she was raising her family was she did it by getting to know people, by networking. She was wonderful at meeting people and bringing people together.
Speaker 2:And so that's really the legacy that I followed.
Speaker 1:And what she said and I just cringed with my memories from last fall, about a year ago, when I had to work within the Medicare system and go out to the office with 25-minute drive, four different visits to finally get the paperwork processed, and they had it all screwed up. And first time I went to get a refill at King Soopers. They're like you have this other insurance company. I'm like, no, I don't. I don't have any other insurance company, I'm on Medicare. Now I got rid of my old one and oh, it was a nightmare. And I remember thinking you go out to the office what's it called Social Security office, and there's all these people you're waiting and I just thought, because some people are obviously disabled or really elderly Not that I'm not, but I'm not that old but I just thought, man, I'm so glad at least I've got two master's degrees and I could figure it out. But for somebody, just the ordinary person who maybe is disabled, blind, whatever, dyslexic, it would be a nightmare. And you specialize in people getting through systems.
Speaker 2:Well, that's not where I started, craig. I didn't start there at all. As a matter of fact, we came to Colorado and this is one of those grace of God situations. To be perfectly honest with you. We didn't come seeking the wonderful services that are available here. We got lucky. We like to ski. It's something our family has always done together. We always vacationed here and said, if we ever have the chance, we'll live in Colorado. That was actually the best thing we ever could have done for our family, and the reason is because we have two young adult children.
Speaker 2:At the time, they were 18 and 20 years old when we moved here, and the 20-year-old stayed in our hometown of Chicago where we raised them, and our 18-year-old came with us and he quickly fell off the services cliff, didn't matter that he had graduated with honors, with a 4.2 GPA, and had acceptances to colleges all over the country. It didn't matter. The services still went away, and that's what I'm referencing when I say those people falling between the cracks. My husband is another one who his family did a really wonderful job of not letting him fall between the cracks the part that they weren't able to help him with and this was back in the early to mid 80s. They weren't able to help him with the social pieces of it. They were able to help him get into a very good college program. He got his engineering degree. College program he got his engineering degree. I found it funny when you referenced the fact that a lot of the women that Leila referenced last week go into engineering.
Speaker 1:My family's riddled with engineers lots of them, yeah and school year learning is just not far from my office and I work with some of their kids and when I talk about social processing they're like, yeah, we don't have much of that at school.
Speaker 2:And I can tell you they're at the School of Minds here locally, and this is just one more wonderful resource that's going on. The School of Minds not only has a club that was started by a wonderful young man, they call it the Infinity Club. The founder is Adam Shade and he is a student at the Student of Minds, and Adam started a group specifically to support other neurodiverse students at the School of Minds and he partnered with a faculty member who also had started a neurodiversity support group for faculty at the school of mine. That is awesome, yes.
Speaker 1:It's really cool.
Speaker 2:This community that we're living in really is phenomenal in terms of finding ways to help each other. It really does feel like a value within Colorado is. People like to connect and people like to help each other, so that's a very important thing. Problem is that doesn't reduce the difficulty of access through government systems, which is where the majority of the funding is coming from. I mentioned before that my husband was given a lot of opportunities despite his neurodiversity and, quite honestly, we didn't know he was neurodiverse until our son was in high school and a priest who we absolutely love was helping our son and had particularly heated conversation over some behavioral issues with me and my husband. This priest pointed out to us that my husband was most likely on the spectrum as well. Asperger's syndrome is the term that he used and it is one that we really, really love. We were very tied to it because there's a lot of variety within the autism spectrum and Asperger's does define a certain demographic better. But I understand there are some.
Speaker 1:That's a tough one for our audience. I think we addressed this on one show quite a while back. They decided to so Asperger's easiest way. And I talked with Alila. There's a spectrum of autism spectrum. So there's people with just mild symptoms, moderate symptoms and then severe symptoms and people often think of Rain man and all autistic people are like that right, and so now this is a really big spectrum and so Asperger's had its own little niche and it was fun.
Speaker 1:The guy's name was a German doctor named Dr Asperger's, and so when the kids were Hans Asperger, hans Asperger. And when I say to the kids, oh yeah, it's called Asperger's and they're like Asperger, they just crack up. But the community, unfortunately, the Asperger's diagnosis didn't get you insurance coverage for services and so they passed a law to include that and make that part of the autism spectrum disorder so that people on that end of the scale could still get health insurance benefits. So it opened up services. But at the same time I've been to Asperger's support groups and done talks and one of them several years ago, the lead person she will not say ASD. These people have Asperger's and they want to see themselves as distinct. But it is many times very subtle, and people in what we call Asperger's are often very successful.
Speaker 2:Very successful, as is the man I'm married to. The difference is and I always find this so interesting people who identify with Asperger's syndrome will oftentimes say to you yeah, the symptoms are mild to you, you have no idea what I'm living with every day. That is the difficulty, that is the challenge, and I'm sure Lila alluded to the fact that so many women and we women are queens at masking. We do that so well. The energy that takes and the ability to get through day-to-day life with that Asperger's is. It's a very complicated condition to work with, most of all for the person with that identity.
Speaker 1:It's so fatiguing for them because they have to act neurotypical during the daytime at work or wherever, or college, right. But then they really need to be themselves when they're out of school or out of work and just have their little cave they can go to. And I see the guys they love gaming, right, and then they have their gaming time and they can just relax and get geared up for the next day. And they are talking about the fatigue syndrome that comes with being on the spectrum or with Asperger's.
Speaker 2:And that's one of the reasons that the benefits that are available are so incredibly important, because people with these spiky profiles probably a term that you're very familiar with, but when we are diagnosing people with a variety of different neurodiverse conditions, we oftentimes hear and see in their test results that there are big spikes where they're very good at things and they're very, very low troughs, and that's pretty critical, and that is one of the first things that I go looking for when I'm working with a new client. Everything I do, of course and me and my team do is focused on people's strengths and on finding the things that they're good at, and very person-centered. We really want to know what's very important to that individual. But across the board, what we see is the executive functioning challenges that go along with neurodiversity. I don't care which flavor you have. There's often-.
Speaker 1:Often seen comorbid.
Speaker 2:ADHD, there's always that executive functioning issue, and so for that reason, because people are putting so much into whether it's their job or school or their social relationships they do experience this fatigue, and so what we want to do, and what the benefits within Colorado are really good at doing, is to helping people get the supports that they need to take care of those other things so that their life doesn't fall apart and they are able to work.
Speaker 2:We see work as an. We want people to achieve to their highest potential, and if their highest potential is living with their family or living in a host home or buying their own ranch somewhere, whatever it takes, whatever is going to be fulfilling and is the goal for that individual, that's what we're looking to help them find, and it is critical that we're pointing out for people what their value to society is, because there's another critical piece of this that none of us like to talk about, but something that we have to run into, and you'll know the statistics better than I do, craig, but there's a lot of self-harm within the neurodiverse community, and particularly by the time people are young adults. They've been beat up with it inside and out, no matter where they've gone to, they've been hit over the head with what's wrong with them or what is challenging for them.
Speaker 1:Socially. I just heard about a new middle school in Colorado that I reached out to. It was on Instagram. I said send me your information Because for our kids with autism when they hit middle school, the teasing, the bullying it's just unrelenting at that age.
Speaker 1:Now we know there's huge brain changes of the middle school brain. With puberty and man they can be mean to other kids. And there's the boys who want to bond with each other and be brothers and that often means taunting some kid who doesn't fit in, making fun of that kid right, and it just takes a toll on our mental health. I remember years ago her son. Now he works for like the FBI or the CIA. He yeah, he big time computer guy when computers were just starting and has had an amazing career. But when he was in middle school his mom pulled him out to home school and then I'm like he's not going to be around other kids. He said no, I have to save them from the other kids and then he went back to high school and there's big maturity gain over those years and the kids tend to.
Speaker 1:I think 80% I remember this now 80% of eighth graders report that they were bullied in middle school. When you research high schoolers, 40% of 12th graders said they got bullied. So it dropped in half because they start to mature. And if you look at college seniors, I'm guessing it drops down to 15% because people are maturing Not everyone. So there's still some of those jerks that want to pick on somebody, but they really put up with a lot.
Speaker 1:What I like about you, what you do, is you really try to create a team effort. So for our parents out there, if you have a child who's neurodiverse or another parent that you could reach out and support. They're doing so many things with different people. It's usually okay the pediatrician, and then we got the psychologist, and now we've got a psychiatrist, and now we're going to one of our group therapy programs for social skills and we need some individual support. And the parents need couples counseling because they're so stressed out, and then they got the OT, and then maybe a tutor, and you've got all these people in their own little spheres and very often there's no one there to coordinate it at all and it sounds like you help bring people together.
Speaker 2:I work really hard at that. That's a fundamental part of working with Alpine Square is that I can't do it alone. None of my team members can do it alone, though we have vast success and professional behind us. None of us are therapists, none of us are clinicians A stretch of me. Most of all, I've got a couple of different teachers working with me. All of them are much better educated than I am. One of them is a lawyer education.
Speaker 2:So we have all of these vast experiences. What I bring to the table most of all is that I'm a mom who adores her children and I think the greatest gift that I've ever brought to this world and my legacy is going to be these two amazing people that I birth, and that, to me, is the most important thing. But I do have a little bit of education behind me and I was fortunate enough in the 1990s to be working. I got out of college in 1990. And I spent that decade then in the software world was when dot com and all that was going on, and so I learned project management skills, never got those certifications Today I would be a scrum master or something like that, but back in those days I was learning by hook and by crook and really I did do project product management for software companies. I did a lot of sales and marketing that kind of thing as well, and so through those skills I brought that together in the terms of what we need to do today.
Speaker 2:And what do the other families out there that are living in our very small niche of the people, like I said, that are facing challenges but the challenges are not always seen, and by looking for that particular demographic. We've been able to help a lot of people recognize their goals and I always tell my team members don't be focused on whether or not they're working with Alpine Square. Focus on whether they're working with somebody, put it together and make sure that they understand. This is what we can do. We can introduce you to people. We can help coordinate services, whether that's in helping you find a job, whether that's in helping you get the education you need, whether it's figuring out all of that do you need those things? Or whether it's helping you figure out how do I get groceries in the house. We can help with all of those kinds of things. We can help with the transition from the family home kinds of things. We can help with the transition from the family home. We're not a matchmaker service, but let me tell you we help a lot with putting together people socially and we need all of the other support people to help us with that.
Speaker 2:So there isn't anyone who has any of the neurodivergent diagnoses that they bring with them. That can simply work with a coach and they'll be good. It just doesn't work that way. At the very least, we need to know their PCP. We hope that they have a therapist that they're working with whether it's DBT, cbt, you name it but we want them to be involved with people that are looking into their mental health, because there are a lot of mental health challenges that come with the neurodivergent minds. With that, we also work to engage people with whether it's speech therapist, occupational therapist we really do put together a team to make that happen.
Speaker 2:But then the big question is that costs a lot of money. How do you pay for that? And the statistics within our community for unemployment and underemployment are really ugly too. And so a lot of these people at early ages, early 20s, they and their families are looking at this whole situation and going. Their families are looking at this whole situation and going. I'll just go work at the Home Depot, I'll go hide out in a warehouse somewhere, I'll do what I need to do, and that lost potential is just painful. And so we help them access things like vocational rehabilitation services. Again, I'm going to come back and praise the great state of Colorado, our Medicaid system Okay diagnosis. That opens up the doors to all kinds of other services being paid for you In-home services, having your education paid for. There's just so many different avenues that we can open.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, that's how parents find those things right. So, for our audience, some people have the ability to self-pay. They have an income level where they can pay for these services at different places for their kids or themselves. Other people have health insurance right and for mental health services. Trying to find someone who takes your insurance that has openings, that's a tough one, that's hard to find. And then there's the state-funded or federally-funded programs and you can imagine, and because of the narrow segment of people that Alpine Square works with from a job coaching and independence perspective.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes our clients are not SSI, SSDI dependent because there are resource limits and things that come with that, and so that's difficult. But I do suggest that people go ahead with the application process anyway, because we don't know what's coming down the line the nice thing about neurodivergent conditions unless you have a tb, a traumatic brain injury or something that can bring the onset of a neurodivergent like condition. Generally, though, we have our counselors and therapists that are doing the diagnosing, writing letters that explain Most autism, adhd. Those kinds of conditions are lifelong developmental delays.
Speaker 1:And that is the one phrase.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly that's the one phrase that gets people past some age restrictions and some different ideas.
Speaker 1:So our daughter being adopted, it wasn't a lot, but she had a monthly thing through SSI and then when she turned 18 last summer that's when it stops. Now she lives with us, so that wasn't a big issue. But for many children, when they get kicked out of the system at 18 and they're in a foster home or a group home, they end up on the street.
Speaker 2:I know some states like Illinois.
Speaker 1:I think Illinois was one of the first to make it 21 so that they have more coverage and financial support, so they hopefully have a better chance to launch. But when I got the letter about my daughter, it said unless you're in full-time high school and so I thought, yeah, she's got another year. She was held back here when she was in first grade. This was before she came to live with us. She was a runner, She'd take off running and it was in Estes Park or in the mountains and she'd take off run through the woods and they'd have to chase and held her back here. It took six months to get it reinstated and I think I had four visits there and they were like oh, it's in process, we got stuck at the processing center, We'll put in an alert, Should be two more weeks. Six months later they finally like, oh, OK, here's to make up from when she turned 18. And but it was such a pain.
Speaker 2:It's a very, very painful process and not one that we just want to have available to concerned parents like you, craig, or to people who have the money to pay for it. We accept private pay of course we do Any for-profit organization is going to do that but our mission is truly to help people access those services that they are eligible to be receiving, and that means that having people like my team available to help you also has to be able to pay for it. I'll take you down just a very short path here. For example, I oftentimes have people. Let's do it this way.
Speaker 2:Let's give you a 43-year-old woman has just received an autism diagnosis. Known all her life, something was off. She can take you through the rape when she was 13. She can take you through out of college multiple times. She can do all of these different things. And now she finds herself divorced. She's got a couple of kids. Tough situations, but the thing is, she's figured it out. She's a determined, hardworking person who's been able to keep herself employed, get herself into what she thought were good situations, only to have them fall apart. And now, at 43 years old, she's actually got a reason for why all of these things have been happening and it's unfortunate that she hasn't received the support she needed up until that point. But guess what? Now there are people to help. Now that we have people don't like labels. They don't like labels. Oh, I don't want them to feel disabled. You're not disabling them. You're empowering them by giving the ability to talk.
Speaker 1:Now they get in the door. It's the first. In the Hebrew and Christian tradition of the story of Adam and Eve, the first thing God asked them to do was to name everything. And you have to have names for things, because when you encounter something they don't know for the first time, they're terrified till you name it. Once you've named it, it gives you some psychological control over it. So that's just the universal brain function for us. But by naming it you then access services, and it's important to the audience that your child, if you're a little one, middle school or high school or young adult, they have a right to service us and they have a legal right for that.
Speaker 2:They do and I want to help them get to it.
Speaker 1:They need somebody like you and I want to make sure we get your website and Cindy could post it in the show notes. What is your like? How do parents reach you? What's the best way?
Speaker 2:The easiest way to reach me directly is through the website, and it's alpinesquarenet. Everybody wants that to be com. I wasn't able to capture the com. It's net, net, okay.
Speaker 1:Alpine Square and I love the alpine.
Speaker 2:It's gone a lot.
Speaker 1:Yes, alpine I like those mountain flowers. Those are our kids. Exactly, they really, really are. The high mountain alpine flowers are fragile.
Speaker 2:They are. They're beautiful Boy. Can I use that one?
Speaker 1:Yes, you may.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought maybe it was the name that's far more beautiful than anything we thought of. No, actually we are a family of four it's my husband, myself and our two adult children, and so that's the square, and Alpine is. We love Alpine skiing.
Speaker 1:Use the flower ones. I love the flower.
Speaker 2:I'm totally picking up on that they're just gorgeous.
Speaker 1:They're really fragile, but they're gorgeous.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. I love that. Definitely going to take that.
Speaker 1:My wife and I are going to do a backpack trip from Crested Butte over towards Aspen and it'll all be through alpine flower.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:And a stream and we just have to go back along the stream and they join the flowers.
Speaker 2:Completely amazing, and they really are beautiful, and so are our kids. Oh yeah, for absolute sure. And every individual has value, every individual can contribute to society and everyone needs a community to belong to, and that's another place where I believe that the label naming it, the diagnosis in writing in your medical records, really is valuable, because it opens up this entire community of people that want to support you and I want to give a shout out oh, go ahead, pardon, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 2:I want to give a shout out to another just amazing organization.
Speaker 2:One of the ways that I help people much like this woman in her 40s that I was describing, one of the ways that I help them to access services like getting to me or someone else that can help them is I send them to the Autism Society of Colorado, and that organization has a grant available.
Speaker 2:It's not huge, but for an individual, if you can tie your needs somehow to employment and I can tie anything to employment that you can get yourself a $500 grant from the local Autism Society of Colorado. Their executive director, jennifer Korb, is the recipient of those grant requests. It's a super easy Google form. You give a little bit of information about what you're doing and they will have the $500 sent to the provider of your choice. Altine Square has been the recipient of many. I've lost count how many of those we've received, but what that $500 grant does is it allows us to then get that person into DVR services, into Medicaid services, so that we are then that pays for our work and our services in doing that and then through DVR, through Medicaid, we can help them then pay for the other services that they need without having out of pocket.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and it's important for the audience too. You have the state or federal programs that are funded through taxpayer dollars, but there's all these nonprofit organizations that often garner grants, right support, financial support that they can help families with. And it's like when I was, I didn't learn about it until I was in graduate school, my second or third year of grad school, and one of my friends said did you look up that grants and foundations book at the library to get support for graduate school? I'm like what's that? And he told me and I went over and it was like it's like two Bible sizes. It was huge and it wasn't on.
Speaker 1:This was before the internet, and so I just started thumbing through and there were thousands of organizations that I'd write to or say here's how I qualify If you had Norwegian blood, if you were Italian, I got $500 from Eastern Star, but I ended up getting about $3,000 for my education just by looking through that book. And now it's online, of course, and you just do it online and fill stuff out. There's plenty of funding sources out there.
Speaker 1:But it's helpful to someone like you that can help parents access that. And I also think I was going to mention Guiding Bright Minds, which is a wonderful support organization here, started by some dear friends of mine, and it's for parents to find support with each other, because when you're the parent who has the child with ASD and they're the only one in the class that you know of, you feel different. Or your kid has ADHD and isn't getting invited to birthday parties anymore because they get out of control, you feel different and you need other parents' support. Lila was very informative about that as a parent of a neurodivergent kids and talked about how she needs support as a mom with other moms. You really need to find support places and people can go to you and get that all coordinated with that team approach. Figure out what your rights are for your family, for your child, what support's out there for you when you need it.
Speaker 1:I always for a long time have told parents who might have come to see me for one of our group programs and they'll be like, yeah, right now we have to pay for this or that, and I said, look there's. You have to manage your money, your time and your energy. We'll be here two years from now. If you want to come back two years, come back, do whatever. Pick what's the main thing you've got to focus on for your kid and take care of that first. And if we're down on the lower end of the list, that's fine, we'll still be here. But you have to manage those three things. When you have a neurodivergent family, you'll have so much energy and so much time and so much financial resources, and if you have other kids who maybe are neurotypical, they need attention too, and so it's a really hard balancing act. But that's where someone like you can help, or going to Guiding Bright Minds, getting support, and I wanted to. Early on in our discussion I made a note to myself when you were talking about how some of the young adults want to find romance and you try to get them hooked up with social activities, which there's more and more so many.
Speaker 1:There's dungeons and driving clubs, rock climbing, hiking clubs for more diverse people through Colorado. What's it called Colorado Hiking Club? I don't know. There is so much out there, but I ran our high school group for 25 years and it was all that year. It was all boys. We do mixed gender, but it was all guys. And we do field trips.
Speaker 1:And we went to this it's closed now. It was called Red and Jerry's and it was like arcades pool tables, and then you could do sports betting, which we couldn't go in that section. These kids are 18, 19, 20, right, and so we go to the pool room. There's about six pool tables and we come in and there's five young women playing pool. My guys were like Eureka and they immediately rush, start to go over to the table right next to them and I'm like, guys, come here, no, we don't want that table, that's going to suffocate them. They're not going to like that. Let's pick this table that has a little wall that's not too high between their table and ours, where we can make casual eye contact and not smother them. And it was a great learning experience Because, man, they were ready to just go right over, right next to them. They Like, no, that's creepy, don't do that. But it was so cute, just adorable, but that is wonderful.
Speaker 2:And it's putting people in those opportunities where you can pick up on those, that's recognizing those places and putting them in spaces. That's why I say I'm not a matchmaker, though I know some very good, particularly within our community. But the reality of it is, if you're isolated, chances are not good that you're going to be having opportunities ahead of you.
Speaker 1:And so we want to pull those people out. If you're socially isolated and you've experienced getting teased and bullied and unfortunately some of our kids then that anger just swells up and sometimes gets acted on. And that is just tragic, absolutely.
Speaker 2:That's the biggest concern.
Speaker 1:It's so troubling and you just think, wow, it's so troubling. And you're just wow. And usually when you see some of those things, someone was a shooter or whatever. They're often socially isolated. They've experienced rejection from others and then they start to have could be revenge ideas, or they're just obsessed with guns or then violent video games not that causes it but and then sometimes act on it.
Speaker 1:And you're like wow, and I my wife and I both we read about this young man who tried to kill former President Trump and we were like wow, he's one of our kids. You know, when they described me, he was isolated, he didn't talk to anybody, nobody talked to him and he got made fun of. I think one of the high school classmates said something like yeah, he's, we voted that would most likely be a school shooter and he just like broken. Wow, how did he fall through the cracks? And? And nobody was there to scoop them up. And thankfully, our daughter went to Colorado's finest high school after a failed two years in DPS and I wrote to them after graduation. That school is there to pick up those kids and shepherd them and give them to high school and it's just a wonderful experience for her.
Speaker 2:And that's absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1:Most of those students are neurodivergent or come from poverty and very difficult family circumstances, but they're there to scoop kids up.
Speaker 2:And my son experienced a similar situation. Particularly middle school was just very awkward and extremely difficult. And despite being twice exceptional and academically extremely gifted, that wasn't enough. And the bullying doesn't just happen from other kids, the ostracization happens from the teachers, it happens from the administration, and having adults in charge of young people that are not neuro-informed is a really big recipe for disaster. And that's the failing.
Speaker 2:And where my son I'm sorry, go ahead, finish and then I'll Thank you when my son found his tribe, his brother, his true brotherhood, was within high school.
Speaker 2:True brotherhood was within high school. And you would have thought he went to a private Catholic, all boys high school, which originally started as a seminary in 1900 on the South side of Chicago, the place where a lot of people are afraid to be. And we found that not just my son but our whole family found a sense of community there. That really was just undeniable and I'm not going to say there wasn't, it's a boys' school. There was, of course, there was hazing, there was ribbing, the way that these educators were able to intercede and when they saw something inappropriate they came down hard and swift and the punishment was you got sent to the dean's office and you did not want to run into the gentleman's name and I everybody should find him that should. He's in california these days, but his name is father benjamin aguilar, and padre is what everyone called him, and padre scared the daylights out of all of the boys, but the parents as well. We were, we all we all knew he was.
Speaker 1:Principles like that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the thing is he is one of the most gifted and kind people. He has a master's in social work by the way is what his education is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he is one of the most gifted and kind and, as our son said after graduating high school, he said the most fair person I've ever met in my life is Padre. He wasn't going to do something because you had money. He wasn't going to do something for you because you were a great football player. He wasn't going to do something for you because he liked your parents. He was going to treat everyone exactly the same way and he was going to help you become your best.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so high standards and accountability.
Speaker 2:High standards and accountability.
Speaker 1:They need that.
Speaker 1:I want to end on a quick story, a shout-out to one of my clients who I dearly love, who is on the spectrum, incredibly gifted musically, and he is moving to the East Coast to go to a very famous music school in about three weeks, and so part of this process is I've been working with the parents on getting all the services for him set up ahead of time so that he has a better chance of success.
Speaker 1:So they found a private psychiatrist there, they found a private therapist who I'll be talking with.
Speaker 1:They got the student support services people involved and right now we're working on a letter from him explaining his struggles for his teachers that he doesn't handle frustration well or changes to things very well and so needs to be prepped a little bit more, given some time to set up for performances or for auditions, this sort of thing, but also the past to leave the room if he needs to just cool down and learn. We're working really hard on breath work and calming down, but we're really trying to set up that safety net for him before he goes, and his dad is going to take him a week early so they can tour the campus, get familiar with buildings, maybe meet some of the professors, but it really is trying to create a Colorado-based community on the East Coast and getting him the support he needs and he will be brilliant and I hope he handles the frustrations that's always a little I feel like the nervous parent with him, but it's just, that's been a blessing and that's what you do, that's what you're helping families do, and I really appreciate that.
Speaker 2:And make sure that that family is talking to student services about what social connections?
Speaker 1:can be made, because he needs that and he wants it and that'll be a great place to meet other musicians and kids like him will be phenomenal. Fabulous, mary, it was lovely having you on Now. You're welcome to stay on for this last bit if you wish. It actually just happened to me when I was talking, and it's called Things of Beauty. Make Me Cry and as I was talking about my daughter's school, I started to tear up about five minutes ago Because it means so much to us that what that school did for our daughter. But that's what the story I wasn't going to tell, but it already started happening. This first one, it didn't make me cry, but it was like just so awesome.
Speaker 1:It was a flashback to my childhood and I was driving. We lived by a park. It's called Eisenhower Park. I drive by it 10 times a day and the one that I was driving by and these two like fifth grade boys were walking home from the baseball field and this one, the kid in the back, had his bat over his shoulder, over his glove hanging off, and I'm driving by and he turned and he waved, like waving at the person going through the neighborhood and I was like we used to do that all the time. You knew half the people in the neighborhood but then even if there were visitors anytime a car came, we'd all wave at them and I haven't seen that in so long. That's why I dawned on me, because the kids we were so fear-based in our parenting and protecting kids. We just have this fear base and put that into our kids and they don't do that anymore. And it was just he looked very confident, strapping young man who's just waving and saying hi and I was like God, I miss that. So that part of our culture has changed for the worse. Sadly, too much fear.
Speaker 1:The second thing I want to share and this is for my program called the Social Club for people who have extreme neurodiversity, which is called schizophrenia, and we started that program. It's our 38th anniversary coming up in August and we have a monthly program where we have a home-cooked meal and we play bingo. This Monday is our annual July carnival, where we'll have carnival games and they can win tickets and they can cash the tickets in for toiletry items, all sorts of stuff that they can get, food, whatever, and last month, a program. One of the women, sally, who's been coming for years, handed me this letter and I want to read it to you. It says Dear Craig, I started going to church the week before Easter last year. A lady I knew who was dying from cancer invited me to her church and I've been going there regularly. I had not been in a church for more than 40 years.
Speaker 1:The church is South Fellowship on South Broadway. The church teaches living in the way of Jesus the way you have had the social club year after year, quietly bringing joy into folks' lives without expecting anything in return. I'm going to cry. It's truly an example of living in the way of Jesus. Everyone is respected and valued as one of God's children. I really thought COVID would end it, but you did not let that happen. One Sunday recently the church individually blessed everyone present. Our assignment was to find someone in the community that is a blessing in your life and pass the blessing on to them. I am blessing it on to you. God bless you and your family and all the volunteers. Thank you, sally.
Speaker 1:This letter will go into my collection box of letters and cards that I've received since I started my career. But boy, the lives of these people are just abysmal, and fortunately because our community of Denver keeps tearing down the old boarding houses where they had a place to live and a community to be with. There's only one left in the city of Denver, and the rest are out in the suburbs or far away, because they put up high-rises for all the new young people coming in. Our people just get further and further disenfranchised from the communities that they have. We keep plugging away at it, though. We'll meet again on Monday. I want to thank our audience for listening today. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and, as always, as a parent, remember to relax. You only have to be this side of good enough. Thank you.