Shannon Autism Talk Part 1

Katrina Mondragon, MS, LPC, LMHC and Special Guest, Shannon!!!

Sponsored by Katrina Mondragon, PLLC (Est. 2016)

Join us as Shannon shares what it is like parenting neurodivergent kiddos on this week's episode of I Don't Know, streaming everywhere under the artist name katrinadragon

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Greetings, fellow humans, Katrina here. Welcome to another episode of I Don't Know because I don't know what we're going to talk about, but I got someone here with me who's new, a new face. So would you like to introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Yes. Hi, I'm Shannon. I'm a mom of two neuro neurodivergent boys, and I'm here to talk about what it's like raising children.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Awesome. And that's a perspective that I don't know because I don't have kids. I'm child-free. So you have two of them, two humans that you're raising. How old are they?

SPEAKER_00 0:30

I have a two boys. My oldest is 10, and my youngest will be six here in a couple months.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Nice. I noticed you got some ink on you. Is that is that anything to do with them?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Yes, I do have a tattoo that's a tribute for a couple people, my sons included. I'm very much in the autism community raising two neuro neurodivergent children. And it's very eye-opening when you see the broad spectrum of the tisms.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

The spectrum. So that's something that has changed within the diagnostic community over the years, is that it used to be you had like autism spectrum disorder or autism disorder, and then you had like Asperger's. Now it's autism spectrum disorder and it encompasses like a large range of people.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yes, because no two people are the same. Like you can't sit there and try to even twins, twins have their differences, and not many people realize that. You know, there's a big difference between a uh fraternal and identical in itself, you know, and again, no two people are the same. You can't put everybody into one box. Some people are are triangles, some people are circles. You know, you can't put somebody in a peg that doesn't fit them.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Triangle makes me think of the triangle breast thing, but also your arm. I noticed on your other arm another tattoo. What does it say?

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Oh, right here it says just breathe because sometimes you just need a whoosa.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

So, what would you say are some of the uh challenges in parenting neurodivergent kiddos?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

I think parenting in general is a challenge, neurodivergent or not. Um, but it's it's definitely every day is has its different challenges and celebrations, you know. It's always it's always a show, it's always entertainment, it's always excitement, it's always it's never boring. Never boring. There's never a boring day in this house.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Nice. And then what about outside of a mom? Who would you say you are outside of being a mom to the kiddos?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Oh gosh, that's something I'm actually trying to rediscover to a degree myself right now, you know, because sometimes with raising neurodivergent children, you can lose yourself. And sorry if I get a little emotional, but sometimes you just want so much for your children that you you kind of give up a piece of yourself for them. That is the beauty in parenting, but also the struggle in parenting, and you gotta sometimes be a little selfish and remember I was a person before I was a mother. Like I was Shannon before I was mom.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Based on your surroundings, it seems like you're a bit of an artist.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

I am that is one of my outlets. It's one of my very selfish things that I do for myself at times. You know, painting with your kids can be, you know, beneficial for them as well. But there's times where I have to kind of selfishly say, no, because I don't want my things ruined. That is something neurodivident, you know, children can struggle with. They don't know how to be gentle at times. So about boundaries, or that's just where I was leading. Don't even know how to respect boundaries. And it's not that they want to be disrespectful, it's just especially I think as a mom, you're your children's safety net. They they just want to be safe, and when people are safe, they drop all their guards.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

And so there constantly need to be that touch, that hug, that reassurance that you know mothers give, and mothers, you know, should be able to give, but at times there are selfish moments where you have to say, like I don't mean all selfishness is negative, though, like as far as when you're on an airplane, you know, and you put on your oxygen mask first so that you can help somebody else.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

That's great. You know, that's a really good way of looking at it. And there's times where it's like you forget that, you know, and I think society especially puts this key view on how women and parents should be, and you should be very selfless, and you shouldn't be selfish, and that you know, you have to put the children first, put the children first, you know. So there are times where it's like you have to be mindful of. I mean, I don't really care what other people think, but at the same time, you know, you want, don't want to appear a very selfish person because that can be taken in a negative light while parenting, because it is making me think of balance.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Like, how do you balance between being like a working a working mom and like a mom?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

I mean, that's definitely a new well, not fully new experience, but it's something new I am struggling with at the moment because I've just gotten back into the work field. But you have to, you know, as a parent, you have to find that balance. And sometimes it's it's a little unbalanced because of how, again, society and times are we're all trying to float in this raging sea that's around us, and we we all know that society.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Do you see society as like a small, like your neck nuclear community, or do you see it as like it's like a global community?

SPEAKER_00 6:21

I think there's definitely levels to it. There's, you know, like your concurrent, very surrounding local, and you know, even within that, a smaller bubble. And then there is a very, you know, globally thing, and there is a very, you know, larger than what you know, because everything trickles down. You know, decisions that are made at the very, very top have started to affect myself and my family and people within my community with cuts that have been made federally. Arizona now no longer has ABA therapies available to some of these people that truly need them.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

And it's an acronym that not everybody might know. What is ABA?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

That's a I'm if you can help me with that one, because I do tend to forget some of them myself. I just know it helps. It's a therapy to help people on the spectrum or who struggle.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

So ABA therapy is it doesn't say specifically, but it's an autism therapy specifically for autism, but I'm not seeing what that acronym actually stands for. Oh, applied behavioral analysis. I found it on Google. Thanks, Google.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Thank you, Google. Yeah, I because I always forget the analysis part, but yeah, it's basically just you know helping them to do what non, you know, neurospicy people can do easily. Not everybody, not everything comes easily to everybody. And that's you know, one of the struggles when you try to generalize everybody or categorize everybody, and you don't look at the broadness of it, and you try to just make it a very much like I said earlier, a box, you know, and it's like we that doesn't that doesn't apply to everybody.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

How would you say like like steps apply or spoons if you know the spoon theory? No. Well, the spoon theory is basically that anybody who has like any like sort of neurodivergence or even physical ailment has a certain number of energy or spoons that you wake up with each day. And so sometimes you might have the spoons to do all of the things, and then sometimes you might just have the energy to feed yourself and your kiddos and go to work, or not even go to work. Sometimes people don't even have the spoons for that, so it's just like an energy level metaphor.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah, I mean, definitely there's again day by day, every day is not the same. You know, yeah, that's exactly it. You know, you wake up some days and you're like, I'm gonna take over the world. And then there's days where you wake up and you're like, I'm gonna hide from the world and I don't want to leave my bed. You know, I've had days like that. I've definitely stayed in bed for as long as I could, or only got up to do the necessaries and crawled right back into bed because the world is you know heavy, even just my little world. And then there's yeah, days where it's like we're taking on the world.