When Motherhood Holds Up the Mirror: Autism, ADHD, and Connection with Amy Bodkin

In this episode we’re getting personal with guest Amy Bodkin, an Autistic Adult who homeschools her 2 Autistic children. Amy is a passionate consultant and public speaker serving families worldwide with needs that fall outside the norm

She joins me for an honest and heartfelt conversation about what it’s like to navigate motherhood, homeschooling, and autism— all at once!

We talk about:
 ✨ The journey from “something feels different” to receiving her autism diagnosis as an adult
 ✨ How motherhood became the mirror that helped her see herself more clearly
 ✨ The beauty (and mess!) of choosing connection over “faking it till you make it”
 ✨ Why so many moms discover their own neurodivergence after their child’s diagnosis
 ✨ How visual vs. verbal processing styles show up in learning and relationships
 ✨ What it looks like to set the emotional tone at home — even when meltdowns happen

Amy’s story reminds us that growth and self-understanding often come in the middle of the mess — and that our kids don’t need us to have it all figured out; they just need us to keep choosing connection.

🎁Need some help navigating the beautiful messy moments of motherhood? Be sure to grab your free "getting started with self-regulation" guide created especially with moms in mind at https://www.sensationalmoms.com

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Amy Bodkin is a Consultant and Public Speaker serving families worldwide with needs that fall outside the norm. Amy is an Autistic Adult, has an Educational Specialist degree in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Neuropsychology, and homeschools her two Autistic children. Amy believes in taking a Holistic Developmental Approach to support because children are full persons worthy of respect for individuality.

"We like to say it is as easy as ABC: Ally, Boost, and Connect! Ally with Amy through her podcast, “Special Needs Kids Are People Too!” Get a Boost with her Educational Resources, including her book Special Needs Kids Are People Too: Seeing the Possibilities Through a Neurodiverse Lens. And Connect through her Membership Group and Private Consultations!"

🎁We are offering listeners an opportunity to get a free month of our membership group! The membership includes free yearly testing for the entire family, weekly events like book clubs, Minecraft on our private server, DnD, Art Club, Video Game Club, and Office Hours for ongoing support. The membership is more than a social club. It is an investment in your child's future!! The number one thing that holds parents back from giving their kids a good start on life is a lack of knowledge in Child Development, including brain development. By connecting with Amy, you can have all of that knowledge in your back pocket without having to learn it all yourself! Let Amy monitor your child's development so you can take one more thing off your list!

Use the code: SENSATIONAL-FREE-MEMBERSHIP
https://amybodkin.com/product/special-needs-membership/

This podcast is not meant as medical advice or a substitute for any medical advice. Please contact your health professional with any mental health or physical health questions or concerns.

Transcript

 Welcome back to the Sensational Moms podcast. Today I am joined by Amy Bodkin. Welcome. Thank you. I'm very happy to be back. So today we are going to be getting personal and talking about what it is like to be not only a mom who is both diagnosed with a DHD and autism, correct? Correct. And balancing that with homeschooling, if balancing is even the correct verb. Well, I mean, that's the goal, but does that actually happen? No. So I try hard though. Yes, yes. And you've graciously agreed, you know, to, to meet up with me and just share your honest experience, you know, all, all the ups and downs that that come. That come with that. So thank you so much. And on a personal note, um, so my listeners know Amy, Amy, I think that you might have been my second interview when I started Sensational Moms, or I might have, you know, I, you, I, I was with you and it was such a delightful experience and Amy has just been there since. Really the beginning for me and just been so encouraging of me both professionally and personally with my own family, um, through your services as well. So thank you so much for being a cheerleader and a supporter for me, and of course for being here today. And apparently it is my favorite thing to do. Well, it has to be because, you know, it's. It's a calling, but it also is another thing, right? To have to figure out how to, you know, fit that into your day and do all the things. So, you know, I, that's another element really that you could probably, that we could probably have a whole different episode on, is how we add in the business aspect to all of that, right? Yeah, I had to take every skillset that I had that I already used as a parent and then like up that. Yes, I can only imagine. And it's been probably quite a journey. Oh, it has. I've learned lots of things over the years. Some things have not gone well, some things have gone well. Eventually we muddle through and figure it out. So for some of our listeners who ha, who are not familiar with you and, and your story and really what you're doing today, even, you know, this is a huge question, right? But why don't you just give us a, you know, a fly by as best you can of, of, of all of that. Yeah. Uh. Well, I'm autistic myself as well as A DHD. I used to be a school psychologist and worked in public schools. Then I worked in private schools consulting. That was when I was pregnant with my kids and apparently I'm allergic to being pregnant 'cause it did not go well. Uh, that's how I ended up consulting in private schools. And then we had children who. Obviously learned very differently and um, it was at that point we decided to homeschool and then other homeschoolers I met were like, Hey, can you do what you're doing for my kid? And I mean, I was just being my nerdy school psychologist mom self. Testing my own children and serving as my children's entire, uh, educational support team. Uh, but I started doing some consults, worked with a homeschool company, and now today I work worldwide with families with a variety of different educational settings, uh, helping them figure out. Where's your child at? What is working, what's not working? What's the next thing? What are we missing? How can we help them be their best self? That's a lot of what I spend time doing, whether that is teaching through speaking or writing books, or it's my favorite providing. Community and support through one-on-one assessment or, uh, community activities for kids and parents to grow and learn together. Um, I love that. So that's a little of what I do now. Thank you for sharing that with us. And I know that when I've worked with you in the past, you know, in a personal, in a personal manner, you've said that you've just really enjoyed putting those puzzle pieces together. For, you know, or alongside with the parents and that that is so true. I felt like that when you were providing services for me and my family. You have to take the parent's perspective into account because they are the ones who see their child and they know their child. And what we get from assessments is only one piece of it. So I kind of, often when I meet with a family, I go into it thinking, okay, I think this is what's going on. And then as I talk to the parents, either it confirms that or I end up shifting gears and going. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's a little different. This is what's the actual picture? So I enjoy that, that like, that's, that's the autism coming out. All the pattern. Seeing, I love patterns. I've always loved patterns. I love puzzles. Um, the things you can see me doing when I'm decompressing is playing some kind of puzzle or tessy type game on my phone because that's, that makes me happy. Um. I love, I love patterns and data. I am a data nerd. Well, that definitely comes in handy for parents because, you know, I think one of the hardest things about homeschooling our kids is that we don't have other eyes on our children. And that's a blessing and a curse really, because so often we just have all these questions, you know, that kind of flying around the back of our head and we just. Think if I could just have someone else help me, you know, hash this out and give me some options, or, you know, there's just so much information on the internet. It is just, I mean, it ends up being anxiety provoking for a lot of, a lot of us. Right? It does, and you're right. I think one of the hardest things about homeschooling specifically is that most parents do not have a. A lot of experience with child development now. Like in our case, we had a lot more child development educationally speaking just because of the nature of what we've done in our careers in the past. Right. Um, but even with that, there's still limits. Yes. Um, and one of the really cool things about coming from a school psychology background, um, especially since my specialty was in neuropsychology. Is that I get to work with a lot of different people. Like school psychologists are the people who, who connect people, you know, they're kind of bringing the whole team together. And um, so I've gotten to connect with a lot of people, which means I get a lot of cross training that way and that really helps me a lot. Because then I'm learning about all these different things, and so when I see a particular pattern come up, I'm like, Ooh, you need to go see so and so, or you need to look for this because you're giving me vibes that this is the direction we need to go in. Um, and that's, that's something that most families don't have access, even in a school setting. It's such a different environment that it, it's just not the same. Right. So you sp you spoke a little bit about, you know, parents and are looking at our children right. And having that sort of, you know, mother's intuition in a way of something not being right or something being a little different or off. And you know, that ends up being a lot of stories of moms that homeschool. If we have a child. Who you know along the way, whether it's by working with you and giving us some ideas, or another person that says, Hey, I, I think that you know, you might need to look at autism, or you might need to look at A DHD. And then we do that and we start to think, well, my goodness, well. I check some of those boxes too. And, um, it can be eyeopening and, you know, and a lot of things. Right. Um, mm-hmm. So what is your, what is your personal experience been through your life with, with that and all of your, uh, letters, I guess. Yeah. Um, well, I will tell you that I do now test adults because I've had enough parents go, um, can you test me? Because I feel like there's something going on here that's good to know. Thanks, Amy. Yeah, it's a common thing. Um. Me personally, when I was little, my great aunt knew something was up and she kept trying to plant all these seeds with my mom and she was not getting it. Like, she's like, these are all the things you need to be working on. And my mom was like, oh, she'll get through it when she gets to kindergarten. And then I got to kindergarten and had lots of trouble. Uh, I think she knew. And, um. Then by the time I was seven, it really reached a pitch. It was a real issue by that point, and, uh, I ended up being diagnosed with A DHD. But, uh. Yes, I was diagnosed with A DHD, but I don't think that really explained the whole picture because I was on the highest dose of medication in the school despite being one of the smallest kids. And it still was a very different experience from the other A DHD kids. And I mean, we know because like I remember one time in seventh grade, they put us in groups to work together. And when they put us in groups to work together. Somehow the teacher managed to assign all the A DHD kids in the class to the same group. So we spent the whole group time talking about who's on what medication, what we think of it, that kind of thing. Uh, yeah, so we were not very effective at all. So, um, it was, it was obvious to me though, that like, it wasn't like everybody else's. I wasn't sure what it was, but I knew it wasn't like everybody else's. A lot of it started to come out in graduate school, but it took a little bit because like it, it's a process to. Embrace yourself as someone who's autistic, and it kind of takes a process to get there when most of the pictures that we see are stereotypical boys and not just all autistic boys. The stereotypical ones, that picture of a highly visual, low language, um, autistic child, which. It does not fit our girls, and it doesn't hit our highly verbal boys either. Um, the first thing I noticed was, I think it was the first year in graduate school, a friend of mine from my class invited me to go to a conference with her and her mom, and it was an autism conference, and Temple Grandin was speaking. I'm sitting in the room and I'm listening to her and I'm looking around the room and I'm like, why are all these people hanging onto her? Every word. Doesn't everybody do this? That should have been my sign. Like that really should have been my sign. But it wasn't. But it wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. It took a bit. And then I also worked with a family that had two autistic children. Um, they were part of a practicum I did, and so I went into their home and worked with them and. I noticed that I really connected well with them. Like it was very easy for me to connect with them in an unusual sort of way for me. And, uh, I did not realize it at the time, but I think it was because. I'm autistic too. And they were autistic at the time. I think maybe the older one was diagnosed with A DHD, but looking back, I'm like, oh, there it is. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, so it, it definitely kept coming up. Now my daughter was born, she's my oldest and she, we got her into therapy at about two and a half. I just kept watching her and going, well, she's just like me. This must just be some really crazy serious A DHD 'cause it looks just like me. And that's my personal experience with it. And, um, when communication started really becoming a problem. That's when I was like, all right, well we need to get into speech therapy. And I still didn't get it. Like I wasn't connecting the dots. It's different when you're doing it personally rather than professionally, because 100% yes. Yeah. You're not objective, you're, you're also dealing with lived experiences and professional experiences and trying to make sense of it all. Um, so she was diagnosed and she was most definitely autistic, and I was like, oh my goodness. I think that explains a lot because I'm just like her And, um, one of the doctors, we couldn't test me anymore 'cause I'd been trained to give all the tests. Yeah. So, um, instead we did a whole records review of everything that we had and, uh, went through and they officially diagnosed me as being autistic when she was diagnosed. So. I had a different doctor who was working with us at the time and he was like, no, you can't be autistic. And I'm like, dude, girls are autistic too. Uh, but he was convinced that my engineer husband was the one who was autistic. And I'm like, no, he's not. Trust me. Like it's not the same thing. Engineer, yes. But not necessarily autistic. Right, right. I. So what I'm hearing from you is that there, I wouldn't say that micro moments, right? Where there are just these like kind of glimpses or you know, that were kind of leading up to that moment and then, you know, going through that experience with your daughter really just kind of, it all happened fast when it happened then. Oh yeah. Yeah. It felt like an 18 wheeler hitting you because it was kind of, you kind of see it all at once and you're like. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a lot. So, so, so how did you receive that? Um, it did feel like a truck hitting me at first because like, I just, I really didn't see it at first. Like, we become biased. And you know, if someone has always told you you're a DHD and all your experiences are a DHD, and then someone comes in and is like your daughter, who's just like you, is autistic, it, it's kind of a bit of a shell shock. Um mm-hmm. Because you have to reconceptualize yourself and your own experiences. And I mean, I, I really do. I have a great deal of compassion when I'm working for families who are in this situation because I know it took me time to process through. Um, now, eventually I processed through it a lot faster than a lot of people because once, once I got over the initial. Shock it was, oh, okay. Oh, oh, that's what that was. Oh, and that's what that was. Oh, this is making a lot more sense. Um, and it all started to kind of congeal. Um, and I was able to make the connections a little bit faster than in some cases where I've worked with, where there are stigmas with having a diagnosis. For me, there wasn't a stigma. Um. Uh, that was not a concern of mine at all. Uh, perhaps because she was just like me. Um, perhaps because of the families I had worked with, even as a kid, I babysat for an autistic child. And, um, it just, it wasn't a big deal to me. Um, I will say though, that once Jessica was diagnosed that. I realized I had a choice. I could choose to continue trying to fake it till I make it, which is basically what I had been taught to do growing up. Or I could choose to connect with her, but I realized I couldn't do both because if I chose to fake, fake it till I make it. Well, then it depends on her to catch up to me. But if I choose connection with her, then that means giving up some of those faking skills, I suppose. Um, so I remember actually a conversation with my mom about this time. She's like, Amy, you're acting more autistic. And I'm like, surprise, I'm autistic. Because I was choosing to invest in relationship with her because if you want to connect with an autistic child, the best way to connect with an autistic child is to go into their world, not to expect them to come into your world. So it was just kind of like one of those intuitive things that I understood about her and our relationship and our connection to each other. That's very poignant. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Um, it was odd because, uh, my mom has also always said that adulthood was like the great equalizer because finally everyone quit developing, so I could catch up. But so it did, it does help when you reach adulthood because I mean, it is difficult when everybody keeps growing and developing and it's like, well, hang on a second. I wasn't there yet. Um, right. But at the same time, uh. I had finally gotten to the point where I had made, I had made friends, like I had friends before, but like I had made, I had made friends with like more neurotypical people and I, and, and it was, I don't know, I guess she had kind of felt like I'd finally gotten to the point where I'd arrived at life. Mm-hmm. Like, you're actually doing this. You're not failing at this great job. You, um, which was exciting. I mean. She was really afraid I was gonna leave the baby in the car and forget the baby at which I understand because I locked my keys out of the car regularly in college, but like about the time Jessica was born, like I could feel when my brain fully developed, like your brain fully develops in your early twenties. Usually I could feel the moment it happened. Mm-hmm. It was in, I think I was 24 or 25. I could feel the moment that clicked and I, I had had that experience and like things were clicking and I'm like, okay, well this is working. But I don't think it would've actually really worked because faking it till you make it is not really a thing. Like you can't fake it till you make it. But, but that's what I had always learned to do. And, uh. Having Jessica ended up, um, really starting me in a different direction of trying to learn to accept and appreciate myself for who I was instead of trying to fake my way to being what people expect me to be. That is beautiful, Amy. That's just beautiful. Motherhood can do that for us, can't it? If we let it, yes. And it does look very messy along the way. It ends beautifully, but it looks messy while you're trying to work it out. Yeah. Perhaps I should say there's a, there are glimpses of beauty amidst a lot of mess. Yeah. There's always a lot of mess. Yeah. So help us understand, you know, both from a personal and a, you know, as a, as a lover of neurobiology that you are, why there is, you know, like you said, you were half diagnosed with a DHD earlier in life, and then it, you know, the autism piece, it didn't really click until later. Why is there that, you know, what's the word? Oversight maybe? Mm-hmm. I think you have to think about the fact that, first you gotta go back to what is autism? Autism. If we really boil it down to its most basic form, autism is nothing more than when development does not happen as we expect at an early enough age that it impacts communication and sensory processing pathways. I mean, that's really what it is. It causes enough developmental disruption that we eventually end up diagnosing a child with autism. So now of course there are some instances where you will see that kind of disruption, but it's a known cause, like Down Syndrome, for instance. Okay. Well, we know that the disruption in development is coming from Down Syndrome. So it's Down syndrome, not autism. Autism ends up being the catchall category for everything else that we don't know. Right. And if you think about it that way, then if you look at a bell curve, the middle part, the really chunky part that's normal and the two ends that are kind of curving outwards, they're thinner. But if you using both ends of the bell curve. That's, that's still a fairly significant chunk of the population. And if your autistic people can fall on both ends of that curve, then I mean, maybe it's not as rare as we keep telling ourselves it is. Um, I think the other issue is, is that up to this point. With the DSM, the diagnostic and statistical manual that we use to diagnose, the guy who came up with it was autistic and he had a brilliant system. These symptom categories lead to these issues. Um, but the problem is, is that. As we learn more about the brain, it doesn't really work because the question isn't, what symptoms are you seeing? It's what's causing those symptoms. And I think we are, we're not there yet, but we're getting to a point where we'll have to reassess how we think about what a diagnosis is and what that means. Um. When I work with families, one of the things I notice is that there's two major subcategories of autism. One is kids who are strongly visual and weaker and verbal skills, and the other is strongly verbal and weaker in visual skills. You can see it go both ways. And a lot of the young adult autistics that you meet in autistic groups are usually the highly verbal, not as visual types. Um. Which causes me trouble because I'm more highly visual, honestly. And, uh, words are very important to them because they're highly verbal and they're really not important to me because I'm just like, all right, but what do you want me wanting me to picture in my mind? Because I just need to know the picture. I really don't care about the words. Um. So that can cause some communication challenges, but it also causes challenges with diagnosis because a lot of our girls and uh, and some of our boys are also highly verbal. Like words matter to them. They get really excited about letters and numbers and words. And verbal communication and visual perception is very different. Um. So I think, I think that's where a lot of the challenges comes. Um, people have also gotten rather lazy, I think when it comes to diagnosing autism. They wanna, they wanna rely on all the autism tests. I never do, I've never bought an autism test. I have lots of test kits in my house. I've never bought an autism test. And the reason is, is because autism tests are based off of stereotypical symptoms that we associate. With autism that really only represent one subtype, so hasn't caught up with, with the reality. No, I don't think so. Not at all. Uh, I think it's gonna take another autistic person coming in to revamp the DSM. There go. I just don't remember. It's gonna be the win, you know? Um, but we're getting there. There are, there are definitely things that I'm noticing as I'm testing. Um, same way with dyslexia too. I'm dyslexic as well. A lot of autistic people are either dyslexic or hypoxic. Um. With dyslexia, like that one's a little easier because we know what happens in the brain when we read, we use our eyes, then we take that visual processing information into the brain. And if you can't process the visual information right, you're gonna have problems. And then you have to be able to remember what you saw. And if you can't remember, it's like trying to teach someone with dementia how to read. Uh, and then finally you gotta sync it up with that phonological system so you know. Sometimes people say, well, dyslexia is only when you have phonological issues. Well, all those other things cause problems with reading and dyslexia means nothing more than trouble with reading. Reading. Yeah. So, and it can also include comprehension challenges, which is a whole other kettle of fish. So I think, um, we're gonna have to start taking that into account more, um, in it. Especially with autism, it makes a huge difference in how people relate to each other. There is a big divide when verbal autistics are talking with visual autistics. And I don't mean that visual ones aren't verbal. 'cause clearly I talk a lot, but Right. Um, right. But I am more, I, I depend more strongly on my visual, uh, cues. And because of that. Uh, it, it is very difficult for me when I am speaking with highly verbal autistics because like I said, vocabulary is really important to them and, uh, it never was for me, like when I was a little kid. I kept asking my parents, am I a boy or a girl? Because I couldn't remember like the difference, why is this important again? Because I just wanted someone to play with and I'm not noticing any differences except for maybe a difference in hair length then that really, that's questionable at best, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, possibly a difference in style, but I mean, is that really a gender thing or is that just a difference in style? I don't know. Um. And as a kid, I also, uh, one time mistook my very tall, pale father for a very tall, dark man because I did not see color as being a relevant descriptor of people either. So Wow. What an interesting, like, I'm, I'm, yeah. So you mentioned, yeah, how it affects how you relate. How does it, do you feel like it has impacted your relationship with your children? Jessica and I have always very easily been able to communicate, like when she was little, there was so many instances, but one example is there was one day I was in her room cleaning up and she grabs her hoppy ball and leaves the room. Most people would go, okay, she's gonna go play with her hoppy ball Uhuh. I immediately got up and ran to the other room because I knew she was gonna take that hoppy ball and go jump on the double bed and fly off of it. And I got in there just in time to catch her before she hit something sharp. Oh, wow. So, yeah, so we always had this way of communicating with each other that. That came before language. Mm-hmm. Um, we're both highly visual. We both communicate well through behavior, um, and patterns. She sees patterns too. Uh, she would draw me pictures of what she wanted for breakfast because she couldn't remember the words. Uh, we just, we always had a way of communicating with my son. He's actually the other kind of autistic. The highly verbal kind that is hyper. And I didn't know anything about this because no one taught me this in school and I had to figure it out on my own later. Um, and I will say, uh, every parent thinks they're a wonderful parent until they have their second child. When you have your second child, usually that's when all of a sudden you're like. How is this, how is there this much variation in the gene pool? What happened? I was doing great. I knew this one. Now what's going on? There's more than one kind. Yes, it was, um, yeah, it was definitely an eye-opening experience. It definitely, um, served me a slice of humble pie and, uh, I learned to understand why parents found it difficult to parent an autistic child because. There too. I had found it to be very easy because she was just like me and uh, yeah. So then when I got my second autistic child and it was a completely different type, it was, it was difficult because I had to learn to think like he thinks. I'm still not good at it. Mm-hmm. But I have an understanding of how he thinks and, and then I would have to translate from what my daughter wanted to tell him to what he was understanding. Um, there was one time they were playing Minecraft and she was so frustrated because she was trying to show him how to craft something and he was not getting it. And I'm like, okay, teach it to me. And then I taught it to him because she didn't understand how differently his brain worked from her brain. Right. And you had learned how to, how to translate in a way. Yeah, but it was a, it was a real learning curve for me. I mean, and I, I realized this very early on, like he had just turned two and we're driving around town and he points to a sign that's green with white letters and says zoo. And I'm like. Oh crap, this kid can read. This is not a good sign. Whereas, you know, most people, they're like, my baby can read. I'm so excited. And I'm like, no, your baby shouldn't read. No, the dyslexic mother does not get the 2-year-old. No, your baby should not read. And the dyslexic mother does not need the hypoxic baby. This is not going to go well. Like he's gonna be. Mm-hmm. Actually, he did out spell me by the time he was five, so. Uh, it was a real challenge in a lot of ways, but I'm also very thankful for the, well for him, but also for the challenge because it's made me so much better at what I do because I have learned so much about Hyper Leia, highly verbal autistics. Um. And just the different variations in the way that we can process the same information. It made me better as a parent and as a professional. So, and about half the kids I see are like Austin and the other half are like Jessica, like it's really about 50 50. Hmm. So it's made a huge difference. So you, you know, you are speaking at the, the beginning of our conversation about community and how, you know, how you have a real passion about fostering a sense of community for us. So I, I'm holding that thought at the same time I'm thinking of. What you're saying, and I'm thinking of this, of the high stress that comes from, you know, being in that mediator role, you know, the example that you had mm-hmm. Of, you know, helping one child understand the other child and, you know, yes. Mm-hmm. Everyone, you know, there's always gonna be sibling, sibling rivalries and all of this, but that is next level, really, you know? Mm-hmm. And how do you, how have you found support? For yourself through, through this. There are a few advantages that I have going for me. One, I am pretty good at compartmentalizing my feelings. I think that comes more from the autistic aspect. I'm not sure though. Um, the other part though, is that with the training that I had as a school psychologist, I came from a behavioral program and so there was a lot of emphasis placed on learning to. Be calm when everything around you is absolute chaos. Mm-hmm. And that as the adult, you get to kind of set the tone for what that environment is going to be. That I can't control how they're going to respond, but I can control how I'm going to respond and how I respond affects how they will choose to respond. Uh, so. I really have used all, I've used those skills a lot. Um, when I work with families, like in a community setting, one of the things I tell people over and over again, um, the community I run is very unique. In that we have families from many, many, many different religious perspectives. Um, cultural perspectives, uh, political perspectives, like pretty much every difference you can have. We have, hmm, like we've got Jews, Orthodox Christians, Latter-Day Saints, um, Catholics, evangelicals. Baptist Methodist, like we've got everybody practically and uh, they all get along really well. And the thing that I always tell people when I'm talking about it is that I learned, I set the tone, who I am is going to impact how that community runs. And it's the same way in our home too. Now, it doesn't mean that we don't have meltdowns periodically. The most famous one, my children called Hurricane Amy because I definitely made use of my need for heavy work by upending furniture. It was great. Hmm. That hasn't happened many years now. So, um, who knows? But it was memorable. Oh, it was definitely memorable. Everybody still remembers it. Um, so that doesn't mean that like those kinds of messy things don't still happen. But if my goal is to set the tone more so than anything else, then that's what I prioritize. And, and it is really cool because when you set the tone. You teach your children more by being yourself than anything you teach them. Yes. And yeah. And so every time I set the tone in our home, I'm teaching them. And during the Hurricane Amy meltdown of, I don't remember which year. Um, it was interesting because Jessica sent me a text in the middle of it. I want to help you, but you're too loud right now, but I can help you when you're quieter. Hmm. And Austin and Jessica and David all came into the room when I'd finally worn myself out. And um, they did make fun of me a little bit in a teasing way. It was funny. But they also helped me pick back up the furniture. And, uh, Jessica went and made us some hot tea and we sat down and tried to figure out why is mom completely losing it? Like, what happened? Um, and it, it was interesting because those are all things that I had done for them many, many times. Yes. And so family. Family is where children learn how they expect to be treated in life by others. If our children are treated with love and respect, they will learn to expect love and respect from others, not abuse. Um, and also in addition to being aware of, um, what we expect as far as other, the way others treat us, we also learn how to respond in different situations. And there are 1,000,001 things I don't do well, 1,000,001, I mean out of 12 executive functioning skills, I have like three and I make very good use of those three. Uh, I've got them maxed out, but um. But I feel like I heard a story one time by a minister. It was a man who had two jars and he had two piles of big rocks, two piles of small rocks, two piles of pebbles, two piles of sand, and two jars of water. And the first jar he puts in the water and the sand and the small pebbles. And then by the time he gets the small rocks in, it's like overflowing. Mm-hmm. So the next time he puts the big rocks in first. Then the small rocks which collect in the cracks around the big rocks. Then he puts in the pebbles, which collect in the um, cracks that the small rocks left. Then he pours in the sand to fill in those cracks, and then finally he puts in the water and it all fits. And so I think, and this is actually coming off of one of my executive functioning strengths. I have three just so you know, their flexibility. Organization and metacognition. And I think what it comes down to is it's the metacognition coming out because metacognition is where you make meaning out of the patterns that you see. And I realized that I had to figure out what my big rocks were and that those had to be the priority. And the longer I've parented and the longer I've homeschooled, the more I have come to realize that the checklist, the curriculum, the to-do list, none of that is very important. I mean, when kids have what they need to grow and learn, they grow and learn whether you do anything or not. Um, as long as they have what they need, they will grow and learn. Um, but the things that are the most important are the things that are harder to learn automatically. Things like, um, how do we expect others to treat us? What kind of standard do we set? Um, how can we, uh. Interact with our family members in positive, healthy ways where we provide support for our family in times of trouble because like that's what families are for it. It's so that we learn how to do those things. Kids don't learn that at a real early age. They, they learn it as they go. Um, and as they grow, we do see glimpses of them catching it. Like when Jess was little and someone would cry, she would hand them her sippy cup. Because that's what I would give her when she was upset. And so she would give her sippy cup when someone else was upset. And so we see these glimpses along the way of them picking up some of these things. But I felt like those are the most important things. They're also the things I'm better at doing. So you kind of have to prioritize what you're good at, right? So what do you, when you were saying that there are things in your life that you've learned, okay, I need to have this in place, this matters, you know, and of course for, you know, disclaimer, right? We're all different in those things. Oh yeah. But what have you found for, for you to be those big things? You cannot copy someone else's big rocks. It does not work. Um, for me, I think that setting a tone, whether that's professional or personal setting the tone is really critical. Um, when the kids were small, we had three rules because I couldn't remember more than three and I couldn't enforce more than three consistently. Um, and it helped me know what. What are our boundaries? I don't know. Right. I had it. I had to think about it and decide what they were, and then it allowed me to know what I could let go. Well, that wasn't a rule, so obviously it's not a big deal. Mm-hmm. Um, those kinds of things really helped. I feel like our relationships with each other are more important. Um, of course, that's also my job, like. My husband, he's got a completely different set of skills. Like he remembers that we put laundry in the washer and to move it so that it dries completely so it doesn't mildew. That's a fantastic strength one that I do not have at all. Um. I think he'd be much better at Bill Pay, but somehow that one ended up on my list. Why you would give that to the person whose strengths are organization? Metacognition and flexibility. Flexibility is not useful for Bill pay A due date. Yeah. Yeah. But I did use my organizational skills to create an event on Google Calendar at once every month so that I could pay everything on one day. 'cause otherwise I would get confused, so. Mm-hmm. Um. Yeah, I, I think for each person it's different, but I guess I do think that the relational aspects, like people are more important than anything else. And the relational aspect is very important. But, um, I think some of it also depends on where your skillset is as to maybe how you make that look. Um. Some people show that they care more through providing or um, through doing hands-on things, but you don't wanna lose sight of the fact of why you do things. Like it's really the why behind what you're doing, and that's. I think that's probably been more important to me than anything. My kids, actually, one of them did recently say he's a teenage boy, so you know, he's comparing himself with his friends a lot and he's like, mom, you need to teach us more math. And I'm like, nevermind that I have been handing you curriculums over and over again. And like you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make them drink. Um Amen. Amen. Yeah. But, um, it, it was interesting though, because that's what he was thinking and we had a long conversation about it, and I told him, I'm like, honestly, I really don't care about your math skills. And I mean, this is coming from a math minor, okay. I, I do actually care about math, but I told him, I'm like, look, I really want you to be happy, healthy, well-balanced individuals, um, more than anything else. If you're nothing but a math brain, there's gonna be a lot of limitations in your life. There's gonna be a, like, you're gonna be lonely because you want friends and you have a hard time figuring out how to make friends 'cause you spend all your energy on math. Um, so I told 'em, I'm like finding some balance, um, investing in investing in the whole lake. Human component being a person. Um, oh, and finding how we can do things in a way that works because sometimes you kind of have to break the rule book, like, you know, everybody else is folding their clothes and putting 'em in their drawers. But like for a long time there, all the clean clothes went in, the clean clothes basket, and all the dirty clothes went in the dirty clothes basket. 'cause it worked. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I had a friend who turned her front, um, office into a family TV room because they turned their entire living area off the kitchen into what looked like the back of a restaurant kitchen because that's where her and her husband had met. And they ran their lives that way and they were constantly making food for people. And so. That's how they did things. And I, I think that like your space, um, how you do life, those things have to match what you've got because you don't have the same things everybody else has. Yeah. I almost certainly don't. Yeah. Yeah. And just being, like you said, willing to embrace that uniqueness. Yes. And what that looks like for you and your family. And so the support that you have for yourself as a mom might look different and probably will look different than it might from someone else, right? Um, oh yeah. Intentional about finding, about finding what that is about, intentional, about finding what your big three, you know, for example, are, and you know, living that out with your family. And being okay that math might be the minor, right. And not the major in your homeschool, despite everything else you see from, from, from all the other homeschoolers that you know, that are doing things way differently that than we are doing them. And I mean, if you think about it, some of it also comes down to like, when I'm working, I take more of a developmental approach. And so in a lot of ways I apply that in my personal life too. Mm-hmm. Because like. Okay, well, what's the next step? Like when we're language delayed? Maybe math isn't our next step. You know, maybe it's developed language so we can talk about math. That might be a good idea. Or, you know, maybe we start with the language skills and then maybe we emphasize the softer skills, like, you know, interpersonal relationships and stuff. And then math gets pushed on the back burner until we can get to that because we needed to work on all of the language and social and interpersonal skills first. Um, trying to remember that people are human beings and that right. They need balance in their life. So that's right, and I try to bring balance in my own life, but quite honestly, at this point in my life, I mean, I've hit my forties, so I'm on the decline now. I don't think I'm going to be developing any extra executive functioning skills than the ones I have. So at this point in time, I feel like I kind of brought balance to my life by getting married. And honestly, I highly recommend marriage for autistic people because quite honestly, like a friend of mine said it best, me and my husband are like two, two halves of the same brain and we don't do very well by ourselves. So, you know, if, if you have a lot of significant weaknesses in certain areas. It's helpful if you can find a partner that you can have a really positive relationship with who brings to your life the things that you're not so, yes. Um, on the other side of that, sometimes I've noticed myself, uh, picking up, dare I say, you know, weaknesses sometimes of my significant, you know, sometimes we start to mirror what we're around, you know, habit wise and things. I, um, I realized recently that I was leaving more clothes lying around than, than my husband was. And I was like, wait a second. Oh my gosh. The roles have reversed. You do end up getting to pick up some of those. Yes. You do end up getting to pick up some of the weaker areas too. Although sometimes that's for the better. Like, um, my husband has always been very good at knowing when to just stop working. Hmm. And I've never been very good at that. And, uh, rub that a little of that rubbing off is not a bad thing. Not a bad thing. Yeah. Even though. It's one of the things though, that used to irritate me, because you know, when kids are small, there's a lot to do around the house, you know? Mm-hmm. And, um, I'd be like, whatcha doing? You're playing a video game. They're awake. Like, how do you think that they're going to stay alive if you're distracted? Um, yeah. Yeah. He needed to let you guard his off switch. Yeah, we both needed to learn from each other. Yeah. And I think that's the key. Um, especially with relationships, which can be also a challenge. I mean, relationships are a challenge in general, and then you add different neuro types to it and wow, it gets exciting. But I think that if we can recognize that. What the other person is bringing is valuable even when it is irritating. Mm. Yes. And if we can look for the value, it, it helps. Um, because we do need people to bring into our lives all the things that we are not, because, I mean, you wouldn't want only hot, you wouldn't want only cold. You wouldn't want only soft or only hard. Like all these extremes in our lives. We need both. And, uh, especially the more extreme you are, which most autistic people are fairly extreme because, I mean, it's a disruption in development. It causes extremeness. Mm-hmm. And, um, and a lack of balance. And so the more extreme you are, the less balance you have, um, the more helpful it is to have people in your life who can kind of help bring some of that balance that you're not managing to create for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Amy, thank you so much for being here and just being authentic and sharing some of your life story with us. I really appreciate that and I hope that some of the moms that have listened along, feel seen and heard by the story that you've shared. Thank you so much. You are most welcome. Authenticity is definitely something I have to offer.