The Empowered Parent with Dana Baltutis

Unschooling Series with Paige Carter (Parent, Advocate, Community Leader, Business Owner): Week 4- Hydrotherapy and Drop Offs

• Dana Baltutis • Season 3 • Episode 4

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Change doesn’t wait for the perfect schedule, and neither do big feelings. We sit down after a long day to unpack a week where a 30-minute hydrotherapy session brought relief, the weather kept us indoors, and Oakland leaned hard into the comfort of screens and familiar routines. Rather than fight it, we explore why control, predictability, and co-regulation can be smart strategies when a child’s world is filled with packed boxes and looming travel plans.

We get personal about the daily school run for Lacey and the meltdowns that come with transitions: the countdowns that sometimes help, the moments that don’t, and the practical safety steps that keep everyone secure. Paige breaks down why static visuals and tabletop tasks trigger Oakland, offering a different lens for therapists and educators—lighten language, reduce direct demands, and protect autonomy wherever you can. We also talk about weekends, nature, and why water usually eases his nervous system, while staying honest about the days it doesn’t.

Amid family recalibration, Paige reveals The Inclusion Collective—an accessible, privately funded membership for carers seeking practical training and genuine connection. Expect live group education on NDIS reviews and school systems, clarity connection calls for questions and body doubling, masterclasses from diverse voices, and an active chat that doesn’t expect perfection. It’s built to meet real carers where they are and make support feel possible.

https://inclusiveoak.com.au/

danabaltutis.com, mytherapyhouse.com.au, https://mytherapyhouse.com.au/your-childs-therapy-journey/ https://www.danabaltutis.com/services

SPEAKER_00:

Hi everyone, and welcome to the special limited series with Paige Carter of Inclusive Oak. And this is the Empowered Parent Podcast with Dana Baltuders. Hello, Paige. How are you? Hi, thanks for having me again. I'm good, thank you. How are you? I'm good. So for anyone who doesn't know us, I absolutely am loving these sessions with Paige. I think it's for our benefit. So Paige and I are sitting here in half of our pajamas because we always record in the evenings. And it's, you know, for some people, it's like already winding down. Like for Paige and myself, it's a we have big days. But we also want to commit to what we were intending to do, and that is to follow Oakland's and Paige's journey and family's journey throughout this term. So I thank you again, Paige, for being here. And I can't wait to hear about your week. So what's new for Oakland and yourself this week? Is this week four? I'm pretty sure. I think so. Yeah. I think it's week four. Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

So our week has been pretty quiet. We haven't left the house all that much. Oakland has just been watching his iPad at playing his PlayStation for most part. However, we did start Hydro last week. So he had a 30 minutes in the pool with his physio. I was really nervous that whole day. I was so anxious to take him. I was like, oh, I don't know how this is going to go. But he really did really well and he really enjoyed it. So that was a huge win for the week. That was fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, he's been just happy at home. I'm still struggling, struggling with getting him to eat, but it's just that's just an ongoing journey for us. Yeah, he's just super happy being at home. He's like really fine with us just that we're packing up our house at the moment. For those that haven't listened to the other episodes, we're traveling Australia next year. Uh well, we're leaving off Boxing Day, so we're kind of just getting ready for all of that. It's getting very close. And he's not really been phased by that. He's just really kind of very fixated and tunneled on his games and his uh cut at the moment.

SPEAKER_00:

And I've got to say that that's may that may be his way of showing his phasing, phaseness, if there's such a word, not phased, phased, yes. Because you know, it is pretty big when people start packing things up around you. Plus, the weather hasn't been great to go outside. I know I've tried to be indoors as much as possible during this last week because of the rains and everything. There was one nice day, I think we had on Saturday. But you know, maybe do you think that he also could be really focusing on his technology because there is a lot of change happening in his spatial world?

SPEAKER_01:

Potentially, yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah, I hadn't really thought of it like that, but absolutely that could be, you know, he's focusing on what he can control rather than what he can't. I love that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, maybe. And and you know what else I love is that he is regulating himself. So that is a form of self-regulation. And we talked about, you know, tantrums and we talked about meltdowns, and there hasn't really been any of those, has there, during the week, or there has?

SPEAKER_01:

We've we've we've still had them over different things, like he really struggles with the transition of having to leave the house to go drop his sister to school or you know, whatever it is that we have to leave the house for. And we definitely still get the meltdowns over those. Today, when it was raining really heavy, the internet kept cutting out and interrupting his game. So that was hard for him. Uh so yeah, we still definitely have hard moments throughout the day. Uh and you know, if I if I interrupt him to ask him a question or something like that, he'll get very grumpy with me, or if I'm not doing what he wants me to do. Uh, he he really loves me to just sit be within his space where he is and just sit with him, or just for him to like be able to touch me at any moment, or like he really still needs that co-regulation, which is hard for me because I'm used to just being up and about doing lots of things and getting stuff done. So, yeah, it it's still hard to manage, but it is just kind of what it is.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And tell me about the what does it look like when Oakland has that, if you like, meltdown when he's gonna leave the house to get his sister to school. Although you know, and you know that it's every day, right? Is that happening every day for him?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. So he knows it's coming. I always say to him, like I give him a countdown of all right, oh 30 minutes until we have to take Diddy to school. So his sister's name's Lacey, but he's always called her Diddy. So when I say that, that's what I'm talking about. You know, 30 minutes until we have to take Diddy to school, 15 minutes, but like that interruption of me telling him can spark him. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. And then when it's time to go, he'll he'll really scream, he'll start getting really angry. I hate school, school is stupid. No one learns anything at school. Why do you have to go to school and ruin my time at home? Me don't want to go out. I think those are the sorts of things that he'll say. Sometimes he'll hit us and um he pulled Lacey's hair a couple of times this last week. Sometimes he really struggles, especially if it's a bit warmer wearing clothes. So sometimes it's hard for me to get clothes on him to leave the house. And unfortunately, we don't have like a garage where I could just put him in the car in the car and wearing minimal clothes. We actually have to go out into the front yard so everyone would see him on the street. Because that's something that Sarah from RPDA Kids suggested. Just put him in the car naked if you have to. Who cares? No one's gonna see him, but at my house they are. Um, so yeah. We just I can I just have to say a very mindful of my like my language, something that Sarah from RPDA Kids said is instead of like speaking directly to him, just say, okay, everybody, we're going now. Something like that. I uh and sometimes it works, sometimes he just speaks me.

SPEAKER_00:

I always have to say, does he? So as a as a speech pathologist, my question, I'm always thinking about comprehension of children and spatial understanding of space and sequencing and everything else. Does he understand that? Because it's really fascinating the language that he's using, right? So I hate school. Why does Diddy have to go to school? School's like interrupting, you know, whatever the way he's saying it. Do you think that he is thinking that one day he's gonna have to stay there?

SPEAKER_01:

No, he he knows that he doesn't have to. Um so he's got really good comprehension around that. He knows that he doesn't have to go to school, but he he thinks what what he doesn't like is that even though he doesn't have to go to school, it's still interrupting his day.

SPEAKER_00:

And also it could be a post-traumatic stress. So I know I went through trauma myself in a it was a work situation a long time ago, and just driving past the place was quite stressful for me. So, you know, it's traumatizing. So that also could be something, you know, that just the thought of someone else going to school and maybe having that experience that he would have. And, you know, do parents usually use whiteboards to draw things for kids? Or, you know, like is it just speech that you're using or are you using some visuals with him? Not I'm not talking about static visuals like pictures. I'm not really into static visuals like pictures because they're very definite, but I am into with the kids that I work with, I usually draw things on the board and then I've got an eraser there that they can rub out so it's not you know permanent.

SPEAKER_01:

He doesn't really have the patience for anything like that. Like if I showed him that, he would just be like, and for him, he finds fine motive skills really, really hard. So if he even slightly feels like you're putting an expectation on him to draw something or to to even rub something out, that will be triggering for him because he doesn't like any like tabletop activities.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so that would be like a PTSD as well, right? Yeah, and he and that's really good to know by that. Yeah, and that's really good to know for therapists and educators that are listening. So even like just someone else holding whiteboard pen or just even showing him a whiteboard could be very triggering because that would be sorry, but he'll throw it at you, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Like he will take it, he'll throw it, he'll get it will make it makes him really angry.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. Wow, okay. So basically, and how do you manage that? Like and and I love what Sarah's saying about just putting him naked into the car. Yeah, you know, maybe he needs like the car blanket and he just wraps it around himself and he runs into the car, like yeah, like a superhero.

SPEAKER_01:

We just kind of we just really try to avoid those things that really trigger him. Obviously, we can't avoid going to school, and it's really Lacey. So Lacey's autistic ADHD PDA as well, and for her, something that's important is being at school on time. So it's you know, like man, like kind of managing the differences between them can be really, really tricky. Um, I sometimes find that the most trickiest thing of all. So I I guess like you know, being at school that Lacey wants to go to school and she likes to be on time, so for this, she has to come first. And honestly, there's not many things where Lacey does come first, if I'm really openly honest about that. Um, a lot of Oakland's needs just they do just get they have to come first because of how much support he needs. But with this one, it's like, well, sorry, mate, we just have to. I know you don't like it, and just validating his feelings around it. I know this is really hard for you, and I know it frustrates you, and I'm like, I'm sorry that we have to do this, but we have to.

SPEAKER_00:

And how do you how do you protect your own emotional well-being in that situation? Because that would be really hard to have this day in and day out.

SPEAKER_01:

Have you just detached from it, like in terms of yeah, I think I yeah, like emotionally just detach detached from it, I think. I just I do and I I think I mentally prepare myself, like I know that that's gonna happen, so I just am just kind of prepared for it. And Lacey and I have little things to prepare for, like the aggressive side of it as well. So in the car, or like you know, if if I I get Lacey to get in the car first before I start bringing him out to the car, and she pulls her seat right forward so that he can't reach her. And if if we're not in the car yet and he starts to attack her, I step in between them. Yeah, we just have little things that we do. We we don't um bring up things in the morning that might trigger him, but we don't talk about like I'll I'll give him like the 30-minute warning of it's nearly time to go, but we're not gonna get up and start talking about it straight away. If Lacey also talks to me about it, she makes sure that we're out of earshot of him. But she doesn't interrupt him in the morning when he's doing whatever he wants to do, because interrupting him is like a trigger. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's for Lacey, right? That must be hard for her.

SPEAKER_01:

And like they've always acknowledged that that having a brother like Erklin is not easy. It's taken its toll on her. She felt, you know, huge responsibility for uh for you know a little kid when he started school. That was hard for her because she wanted to protect him. But she, you know, also had her own school was somewhere where she was able to be herself, and then all of a sudden he was there. But you know, she put up with it because she's a big sister and I I I should protect my brother and I should be there for my brother. And she's she's always had to kind of adjust and just kind of things have always just had to be Oakland's way a lot of the time. We we try really hard to do things one-on-one with her, and in the holidays I always try and take her out with her friends and do things with her when with him not around. Yeah, she does aerial and she does like she does the after school activities. Oakland doesn't do any. She does, so she does Ariel, which she loves, she does face camp, and then like all of her therapies that are after school, we make sure that one of us takes her, and like it's just normally her and I, so that she's got that one on one time.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, and dad's home with Oakland, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, in the afternoons, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And tell me, Paige, so what's happening on Saturdays and Sundays? Are there any meltdowns then, or is it just like when technology, when internet goes wobbly or something like that?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh no, like there's still meltdowns. So, like last Saturday I wanted to go for a walk in the morning and I really wanted us all to go, and he didn't want to. And yeah, like that, there's definitely still meltdowns. It is just easier to deal with when we can divide a cocker, when it's not just me, it's the only adult that's home. Like one of us can be with Oakland and one of us can be with Lacey or continue doing what we were doing.

SPEAKER_00:

And so I bet you're really waiting for that away from routine next year when you guys are all together. And it'll be really interesting to see how it pans out for his little nervous system, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, he loves being outside, he loves being by the water, and like being somewhere by the water, he'll always choose that over being on his games. Well, normally we have we did go away once to the caravan recently when he barely came out of the caravan and we were at the beach. But that so that was very unusual for him. But typically he'll always choose going and being out in the water for at least an hour or so, and then he might come back to his technology. But yeah, it's gonna be nice to be able to be places where he's gonna enjoy being out in nature again and doing all of those things that we've always loved doing together.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I love that. So tell me, I've seen on your socials that you've launched something, and I didn't want to write to you and ask you what it is or anything because I thought you can reveal it to me on the podcast. So, what are you up to, Paige Carter?

SPEAKER_01:

Ha, I'm always up to something. I never do things in halves over here. Uh so I have it's a bit of a relaunch, I guess. So I have for the last year, I've had a membership specifically designed for mums of autistic children. It was called Empower Her. And it was funded by the NDIS. We had like an educational portal, a group chat, we did coffee catch-ups, and we had therapists come on and do masterclasses and all of those things. And in late August, NDIS made a legislation change where that my membership and any like it, any services like mine could no longer charge to the NDIS, which meant that my business kind of just became null and void overnight, which was really hard because I'd spent so much time and effort working on my business and putting you know my whole heart, soul into it. And it really broke me for a few days, the news, because I was like, how can I how can I do this without NBIS funds? Because I, you know, I I understand how stretched parents are already. Financially, emotionally, all the things, you know. And then after a few days, I pulled myself together and I worked with my business coach and you know, my Empower Her community, and I was really honest about what was happening, and I just said, Let's fix this together. And I had the idea of a turning it into a membership that was privately funded and opening it up to not just mums but also to dads and other carers as well, you know, whether that be kinship carers or grandparents or whatever that may be. And through that, the inclusion collective was born because it could obviously no longer be Empower Her because it wasn't just for women. So I launched the Inclusion Collective on Saturday, and it's still a membership, it still operates, you know, pretty much the same way. But in Empower Her, I had one-on-ones, which I would help families with things like preparing for NDIS reviews, understanding the education department, all those sorts of things. However, now in the inclusion collective, I'm doing all of that training on live group calls, so I'm calling them live education calls where people can jump on that be recorded, and I'll upload it to my educational portal, and I'll teach those things to the group and provide a resource rather than it being something that I teach like on a one-on-one, one-on-one basis. Um, we're having uh what I'm what I'm calling clarity connection calls. So twice a month, members can jump on a Zoom and ask me any questions, connect with others in the group, come on and body double and get those you know, crappy things ticked off your list that you've been avoiding. Like whatever it may be, you can just come on and just be yourself and turn that call into whatever you need it to be that best suits where you're at. We have a really active group chat that's staying. We do coffee catch-ups, we do dinners every so often, still having the masterclasses. However, now instead of having to be a therapist that presents the masterclass, it can be anyone that I think will be of use to the community. That's great. So yeah, it's it's it's I guess it's just evolved and turned it into something a bit different than what it was.

SPEAKER_00:

So consolidated basically, you consolidated and widened.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

And also next the second stage of development, right? So it's like children develop and now you're past the toddler and you're into the early, well, could be primary school years, you know?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. So I've tried to make it as absolutely affordable as I possibly can, uh, at$47 a month. Which works how much how much page?$47.$47 a month. So it works out to$11.75 a week. So really, if you got two coffees, you know, six dollars each a week, cut them out, you would be able to afford to be on the inclusion collective. And yeah, so there's you know, there's different payment options. We're also looking for people at businesses to sponsor spots for other people as well. So for people that can't afford to be in there can still be in there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's really exciting. Fantastic. I'm so so thrilled for you that in the midst of all this, that you are still thinking about your business, moving forward, and helping other parents, which that's and I think I love you, Paige. You're amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

It's I really give it my whole heart and soul. And you know, in the midst of all of this happening, or like I think it was literally the week after.

SPEAKER_00:

Sorry, Paige, you're breaking up. I'm just gonna yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Turn my video off. Yeah, there we go.

SPEAKER_00:

Sorry, everyone, we just turned our videos off. Yeah. Is that better? Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, perfect. So yeah, I think it was the week after I found out about this with my business, is when we pulled Oakland out from school, and obviously our trip is getting closer, and you know, all the things, all the things happen at once in my household. That's always the way it goes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, yes. Wow, that's amazing. So, Paige, from your week, if you had to say one thing to parents listening, what would a message be for the coming week?

SPEAKER_01:

Just follow your child's lead. If they are, you know, if they are needing to just be at home and resting and doing what brings them joy, just let them. Um, don't let the shame of them spending too much screen time time on these screens or I'm not leaving the house. Like, don't don't let shame creep in there because I think following our child's lead and seeing what they need and what's best serving them right now is really important. That's something that I've learned through this journey.

SPEAKER_00:

Great, great. And like Paige, what I'll do is I will leave, like I always do, I'll leave your details in the show notes. And I absolutely can't wait to hear, you know, how you're going, how your subscriptions are going for the following week, how Oak's going, how Lacey or Diddy's going, and also how hubby's going. Right. You have to remember him. He's a he's a pillar as well in the family. Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining me, Paige. And I look forward to our next instalment of Oakland's Journey. I look forward to it. Thank you for having me again. No worries, thank you. Bye for now. Bye.

Contributor

Dana Baltutis

Host