Neurodiverse children: More Inclusive Approach Needed with Christopher Wyatt and Katy Moffitt

In this episode of ABC's of Parenting Adult Children, host James Moffitt, along with co-hosts Katie Moffitt and Christopher Scott Wyatt, delve into the complexities of parenting neurodiverse children. They discuss the challenges faced in special education, the evolution of autism diagnoses, and the importance of empathy and support in education. The conversation highlights the struggles of parents navigating the education system while advocating for their children, the hereditary nature of autism, and the pressing issues of teacher shortages in special education. This conversation delves into the challenges faced by autistic individuals in educational settings, the critical role parents play in supporting their children, and the need for realistic expectations and inclusive practices. The speakers emphasize the importance of engaging learning experiences and the necessity of moving beyond mere awareness of autism to foster true inclusion in classrooms and workplaces.

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Richard Jones. I am an RN with over 34 years of Nursing Experience, much of that experience working with young adults in the corrections system. 

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Transcript

James Moffitt (00:02.924)
Hello and welcome to ABC's of parenting adult children podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I will be your host. Today is a special episode because my wife, Katie Moffitt is going to help me co-host along with Christopher and Christopher Wyatt and Katie, I would like for you to introduce yourself to the listening audience, please. Katie Moffitt. I've been a special ed.

About 25 years now, been teaching for 25 years, been in special ed for about 12 years, and we've been married almost 34 years.

James Moffitt (00:45.518)
Hey Christopher, what about you? My name is Christopher Scott Wyatt. am a neurodiverse father and of two neurodiverse daughters. And I am also a researcher and I was a university instructor for 20 years.

All right. Well, thank you for joining us on this episode. Um, Katie and I started a, uh, parenting support group on Facebook back in 2015, because at that time we still had two teenagers that were giving us a run for our money. And, uh, I did everything I could to not wind up in prison and I was successful. And, uh, so I asked my, I asked Katie, said, let's, let's start a Facebook support group and see if anybody else.

Is having problems. And so we went from having 10 members up to about 1.3 thousand today. And so we have a lot of podcast episode. There are themes that keep coming up like boundaries and failure to launch. And there's probably about 10 or 12 of them. I don't have them all memorized, but when I read your profile, Christopher, I, I

knew that you would be able to bring information and expertise to the table with regards to parents who have autistic children. And Katie's here because she is way more of a subject matter expert on all that than I am and so I'm hoping we can have a really good conversation.

I think that the additional experiences that I have as an autistic individual with ADHD also shapes how I am able to relate to what my children are experiencing as young adults. And also having gone through the education system employment, I'd like to think that I am aware of some of the obstacles that they will face though.

James Moffitt (02:55.507)
currently those obstacles are changing very rapidly and obviously I'm concerned as a parent and as an educator.

James Moffitt (03:06.112)
Absolutely. Well, go ahead and go ahead and, tell us about how you got into, mean, obviously you have two daughters that are autistic and, you said you have a little bit of it yourself. I am diagnosed autistic, borderline level two. So what that means is I require significant supports in some aspects of my daily life. thankfully I have an incredible wife who

understands that and has known me since junior high. So she was aware that I have struggles. So this, this was not a surprise to her. You know, there was sprung on her. She, she knew me, well before we, we settled down and had a family, but I have gone through special education and then being with a call twice exceptional phrase. don't necessarily like, but then I was also getting supports while in the

the gifted and talented program. lot of those programs that now serve my daughters are facing a lot of pressure. are financially strained. There is a lack of personnel who are trained in these areas. We live in central Texas. Austin is a booming city. There is no doubt that there are people here. but the schools are having a hard time finding assessment personnel.

treatment experts, support experts, social workers, even school nurses. And as those supports decline, what I'm noticing is that my daughters, my oldest is in middle school here in Texas, and my youngest is about to enter middle school. They are going to not have the same level of supports that previously existed. And I don't know what is causing this trend, but

I can blame a lot of things, but statistically the data are inconclusive. We don't know if it's the low salaries. We don't know if it's other job opportunities. We don't know why people are not going into special education or supports, but they aren't. And, you know, so I don't know how you support a booming school district, you know, rapidly growing area when you don't have the people with the expertise. we have a lot of uncredentialed teachers. In fact, my

James Moffitt (05:34.06)
My daughter just lost another teacher who did not have a clear credential and decided not to pursue it. So she just lost her, her art and photography teacher, which that's how she expresses herself. So losing an art teacher is traumatic and this has been an ongoing issue. so that's what they're facing. They're facing a world in which a lot of people are choosing not to pursue these careers. And that's going to leave our young adults who are transitioning.

You know, hopefully going off to college or, or semi-independent living or structured living environments. If they don't get that training in middle school and high school, I don't know what the future holds. And unfortunately, this is a, this is a difficult time. Right. Uh, I you've got a website, uh, that you shared with us and I want to, um, want to try to share that if possible. Um, let me get to the right.

I direct everyone to a link tree and I know that spelled a little funny. It's L I N K T R dot E E and under slash CS Wyatt, Christopher Scott Wyatt. And that will give you a link to the blog, the podcast and other resources that I maintain on social media. All right. Is that showing? Yes, it is. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Good. Good. So Christopher Scott Wyatt, husband, father writer.

neurodiversity, self advocate, autistic, ADHD. and go ahead and introduce that again. I'm sorry. wasn't. Linktree slash CS Wyatt, Christopher Scott Wyatt. yeah, there it is. Okay. get it. Linktree, linktr.ee slash CS Wyatt. It's interesting. It's a, it's a great way to have everything in one place because otherwise you keep.

putting the links on every single page to get people back to it. And it really struck me as a useful tool. Give everyone one, one URL to go to on the web or on their phone or on their tablet, and then they can find everything else. So that definitely has been helpful. what Christopher, guess what I'm going to start using. I like the price too. It's free. And when you are dealing with, special needs children,

James Moffitt (07:54.2)
There are a lot of expenses. anything that's helpful. I bet. I, I, I created a, I'm on pod match just like yourself and I created a website for, for the podcast and, it's got a blog on there. It's got resources. It's got a place where people can sign up and leave reviews. It's got a, my scheduled podcast releases, got all kinds of information on it, but I don't really have a.

convenient way to show that during the during the podcast episode and I have other links too like you do that I could add to this and I see you've got your YouTube channel you got X you got email indeed on threads podcast Facebook yeah so I like the ability to to add all of these links in here and this is great

it's, it's a good reminder of how much that I'm doing because there's a lot of times I feel like maybe those of us who are advocates for parents that maybe we're not reaching enough people, maybe we're not doing enough or we, get imposter syndrome because we get a lot of experts telling us what we're supposed to be doing. So when I look at the link tree and I follow those links, I can remind myself that no, I am being productive. I am out there. I am on social media doing my best, but.

Right. It's a, it's always a struggle because you always wonder is there more I could be doing. Right.

Well, this is excellent. So I'm going to share that right now. Stop share. All right.

James Moffitt (09:40.472)
Did I put it up like in the corner of your screen or something so people could see it? Cause I, I don't know what it looks like from this end. It did on my screen. Okay. Good. All right. and I'm going to save that because I want to look at that as well. so we're talking to you. We're talking to a group of parents primarily that, that are raising, you know, when says ABC is a parenting adult children.

And that really goes anywhere from let's say 12 years old to infinity. and, I'm sure there are parents listening to this that do have younger children. I'm only, I can only assume that, I don't really know technically what the age limit is or what the ages are of everybody that's listening to this podcast episode. So it doesn't, you know, ultimately it doesn't matter if you've got, if you had children, your parents.

You have unique struggles, you know, especially if you're, your children have, special needs. wanted to say disability, but that doesn't sound good. So I'm going to say special needs. And, sometimes I say things and Teddy has to correct me.

James Moffitt (10:55.214)
But anyway, Katie, you and, and, and Christopher can, can chat about this kind of stuff. mean, I don't even know where to, I mean, I've, we've got these questions that we can ask you, like, how does being autistic change parenting? I'm just going to start with that and y'all can talk about it.

James Moffitt (11:13.037)
the

The challenges that I have, you know, I tend to overlook them until they become serious problems, but I have a lot of sensory processing issues. have a fair amount of communication skills deficits at times.

The challenges then that become parenting are the crowded environments, the confrontational aspect of going into a IEP meeting. don't always want to help and I hate conflict. don't like, I don't like the, our system is somewhat adversarial. So I don't like that. That we're always begging and groveling to get the services that our children and young adults need.

As an autistic individual, I struggle in social situations because I'm not always deferential and polite in the way that people expect. I also think that it limits what we do. but because my daughters both have sensory processing issues, that might be good. Yeah. We go to the movies, for example. I have a, pass that lets us go on Sunday mornings and often we are the only two or three people in the audience.

because crowded spaces with lots of people can really be triggering for myself and my daughters. So there are things we've done that we adapt to, breaking up long drives, making sure that we're taking lots of breaks, making sure they have the things that they need or that I need to survive travel when we have to travel. But as I said, being aware of their sensory issues from a personal perspective, I think helps me understand when.

James Moffitt (12:57.994)
My youngest is, is stressed out because of the input. Maybe it's too much noise. Maybe there was a sudden loud noise. I think it gives me more empathy for what she is experiencing. Right. But it also makes me very aware of how my deficits have shaped my education and my employment. So I'm always trying to find out are there ways that we can better support them so they don't have the same struggles that.

I do, or maybe they can find better ways to adapt to those struggles.

Right. So, so is, let me ask you, this is a stupid question for me. is, so is autism hereditary?

So statistically, looks like it has a higher correlation than previously. Thought there's a number of good studies that are being done at places like Carnegie Mellon pit, the university of Pittsburgh. they are doing a number of neurological studies. There's corresponding studies being done in the United kingdom and Germany, and they are finding that there is between a 50 and 60%. correlation between.

a child being diagnosed and then the parent being diagnosed with some form of neurodiversity. So it's very common to have a parent who at least gets a diagnosis or has a recommended diagnosis of ADHD or a learning disability when they also have the autistic child. And we're increasingly finding that one reason that older adults are now being diagnosed with autism

James Moffitt (14:36.202)
Is as they get their teenagers or their young adults are being diagnosed and the parents are saying, well, wait a minute. I struggled with time management. I struggle in social situations. then because they hopefully have insurance and things they can get assessment. think a lot of people forget that the DSM four and now the DSM five, these are fairly recent changes to how autism is diagnosed and studied.

So for example, for a long time, the term was reserved for those with intellectual disabilities. When intellectual disabilities no longer precluded the autism diagnosis, we saw a spike in the diagnosis. When we shifted some diagnostic criteria and labels, allowing comorbidity, for example, you can now be

comorbidly diagnosed, means jointly diagnosed with autism and ADHD as were previously. You could have one or the other, but they wouldn't use both labels. So a lot of these changes, they don't change the symptoms of people, but they changed the label. So growing up, my first diagnosis in, I want the audience to understand this as a term I certainly object to, but my early diagnosis was mental retardation in brain trauma.

We don't use those terms anymore. don't say that, you know, that someone has.

I'm trying to think of a, a, of a better phrase, but we don't just label the cognitive impairment. are words that thankfully are gone from the DSM, the diagnostic and statistical manual for mental health professionals has dropped. idiocy and retardation and just phrases that just should have never really been used diagnostically and, or in society. And I'm very glad that those are gone, but

James Moffitt (16:33.656)
So what's happened in, when you take a look at the data, which is something I've done as a researcher at what's happened is as you see a rise in autism diagnoses, what you also see then is a shift out of other criteria. So it's not like suddenly, wow, there's this wave of autism. But what happened is if you look state by state at the office of special education programs data, what happened was a child may have had a diagnosis of PDD in OS.

Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified. So the PDD and OS is now gone and they put it in the autism spectrum. So it's not like suddenly we discovered an autistic person. It's what we did was we lost a PDD and moved it to ASD. And I think that's where a lot of people are misreading and misunderstanding these labels is if you're a parent and you're told your child has Asperger's syndrome.

And then along comes the international classification of diseases and says, oops, whoops, you know, we definitely don't want to call this Asperger's. Hans Asperger was a Nazi who studied children to practice euthanasia on them. So we don't want to call this Asperger's anymore. So now it's going to go just autism level one. So autism level one is what we used to call AS or Asperger's syndrome. Hans Asperger being a Nazi who helped sort kids for euthanasia, not a good role model.

So we're going to move the A lot of people who are like, whoa, I lost my Asperger's diagnoses. No, you did not change. You are still you. We just moved the PDD, the AS all into ASD. So what happens that looks like, wow, we've got a tidal wave of autism. No, we, we, shifted the label and went to this new level one, level two, level three, ABCD criteria matrix.

And that has created this impression of, look at all these people who suddenly have autism. We didn't have that 15 years ago or 20 years ago. You didn't. You're right. You didn't.

James Moffitt (18:43.874)
Teddy, can you speak to any of that? Well, yeah, know you're glad. yeah, I remember way back when we started teaching back in 1989 in that range. There was, I never remember ever having autistic kids. We had, MR was just middle retardation is what they called back then. we had.

Tourette's, we had all these other things going on with the kids, but there any autistic. And then as he's saying, they changed the labels and now the kids that we normally would thought were intellectually challenged is what we also would call it now. But they've changed it to different levels and now we do see more of the autism with the kids. I do have a question for you Chris.

When you were talking about the different types, type one, type two, and type three, you said your type two, what, what, makes a difference in the type one and type three. So what we, current DSM guide has, as I said, criteria that are listed a, B, C, D, et cetera. And I'm going to do my best with this.

James Moffitt (20:15.595)
So forgive me just a second here. So the, want to make sure that I get this right. the A criteria list are these social interactions, social and communication B is repetitive behaviors. And then C is something D is E is something. So my daughter, my oldest daughter is, a two B one. So what that means is she has severe enough social and communication impairments that she gets supports at school.

to learn to communicate verbally effectively with her peers. Okay. But her, the B one means she needs minimal supports with repetitive behaviors. She has them and they are noticeable and they affect her, but they aren't going to keep her from having a normal daily life as much as the A criteria social and communication skills do. The reason they did this is it's, it's

There's a debate among the autistic self-advocacy community about calling someone high functioning, low functioning, whatever. So what they did was they created all these different criteria and then you are classified by whether you need mild supports, more extensive supports or lifelong full supports, which is level three, which is basically you cannot do those tasks without help.

Like the talk meal talk. Yeah, I have several kids that are that are nonverbal Yeah Those are level two level three Okay. Yeah, so Are your daughters are they where they can be they talk on their own or? Have to use the device They both are verbal, but my youngest did not speak until

I would need to look this up, but I believe she didn't speak until she was three and a half, almost four. wow. Okay. And her first word was bubbles. So it wasn't mom and dad. was bubbles because bubbles were more interesting than mom and dad. There you go. You know, and again, that's a very common thing is relating better to the things around her than the people around her. My youngest does not have a formal autism diagnosis. Her diagnosis.

James Moffitt (22:36.163)
are we're now, because again, time changes. another doctor may change these, but hers is adjustment disorder with disturbance of emotions and conduct, ADHD combined expression, dyslexia with phonological awareness deficits. you're like, okay, what does all this mean? Because again, they'll come around with a DSM six eventually, and all these will change again. And what I try to tell parents and educators is.

We can't get too stuck to the labels were given because some insurance company will want a different label from a different healthcare provider, from a different book. So I don't think we can get too hung up on the labels as much as how do we individualize the supports for that person, that young adult, that adult. you know, like in my case, I, I know where my weaknesses are, but

You know, I'm very poor at coming up with my own strategies. you know, so, so there are, are things where I don't care what the label is. What I need to know is how do I address these, these needs? Right. Yeah. So that's what I try to tell a lot of people is we need to get over the labels. and special education teachers know this right away. Every child, even given the same label, you might have.

Two who are given the label of dyslexia, but one may struggle significantly more than the other. Labels don't mean enough. They give us a way to start looking at helping someone. But yeah, everyone I've met with a given label is different even within that label, which I know now we're back to calling things the autism spectrum, the learning disability spectrum. And I understand that, but to me, that should have been self-evident.

No two people with the same label are the same person Right. Yeah, it's like with but my kids I know that are autistic I don't know. They're you know, if they're a B whatever all that stuff. I don't get into that I just I know they're autistic. I know that they certain ones can talk and can socialize a little bit, but they still have the struggles like math and You know might have some dyslexic in there

James Moffitt (25:04.708)
or just the issues of.

understanding what you're talking about, know, like for directions or whatever. Um, so we try to help invest we can. Um, but yeah, when I was younger, I didn't learn how to read in fourth grade. And the reason was I actually had, they thought I was just lexic. That was before they even had special ed. And, um, showing my age, but it was where, uh, what am I, my fourth grade teacher figured it out that it was actually, I was.

Right-eyed, I only use one eye, so I use my right eye, but I'm left-handed. So I had a hand-eye conflict and that was the problem. So they were able to get me help with remedial reading. They use SRA back then and that's what helped me. Yeah. And so, I understand my kids. I have a lot of sympathy, empathy for my kids because I know the struggles that they're going through.

I think that that is the key is we want teachers and support professionals who can empathize through ideally experience. but again, it's difficult to find teachers period and support people at all. but yes, I think that having that, those experiences make us more effective. have a big shortage around here also when comes to special ed. And we have several openings for the self-contained class.

I'm doing right now I'm doing resource for lower kids. I've done self contained before, but I would rather be resource. I feel like I can help more kids that way. And, so anyway, the shortages are not just in the United States either. The shortages are now appearing in other countries as. For reasons, like I said, we can't pinpoint them entirely, but.

James Moffitt (27:11.095)
The shortages are real. Districts aren't making it up when they tell a parent, don't have the personnel to cover special ed. But I don't know what the solution is. States have tried incentive pay. Sometimes it's as little as $500 extra a whole year, isn't, it's meaningless once you divide 500 by 12. There just aren't enough things.

special education requires going to a university for usually your master's degree. Yeah. That's again, they get loaded with debt and because we don't do the debt forgiveness, looks like that's on hold indefinitely. Now it's very hard to tell someone to go 50, $60,000 in debt to be a special education teacher who made her in 48,000. It's extremely difficult and we're making it harder and harder to choose it as a career path. Right.

Yeah. We all know that teachers are not into education for the money. Yeah. Don't get me started on that topic. We're paying, paying professional sports players for football and basketball and baseball making millions upon millions of dollars. And, we have, first responders, educators, nurses, you know, people in the medical profession that they're doing good just to pay the basic.

You know, the mortgage light bill, you know, just the basics of life living is expensive, especially in the U S. but like I said, I'll stop. how I could get on a roll about that.

So I'm looking at these questions.

James Moffitt (28:55.878)
James Moffitt (28:59.979)
What did you learn about your autism while struggling through school, Chris?

James Moffitt (29:08.481)
Well, even, even before I was ever diagnosed with autism, when I was dealing just with the ADHD and other diagnoses, it became very clear that I struggled to interact with peers, you know, from an early age. knew that, group work has always been difficult for me. I don't understand group dynamics well, and that increasingly affects grades as we have adopted, pre COVID, we were really on a push towards more group work.

during the pandemic because it was so much remote learning, we went back to more individualized instruction. But group work is a, is a serious problem for me. I, it is, you know, when we teach children to sit around and brainstorm together and we say, we're giving them life skills to collaborate. I don't know about any other teacher, but when I go into my classroom, there's not another group of teachers around me. We collaborate, we share ideas, but we're not.

altogether, trying to do something. My wife is an engineer. Her team does technical documentation. She works from home. She's not sitting around constantly talking to other people, debating things. But I found that group work, that was the, the model was everyone sitting around at once trying to do something. And that's very frustrating for me. So even as an instructor, I changing how I do group work to make it closer to how it's done in the workplace.

Not this, well, let's put everyone in a circle and you guys try to do a task, which to me just isn't reality. so that really shaped how I look at teaching. The other thing is, is I really need clarity. So I got very good about developing assignment sheets that had, maybe if not a strict rubric, but really good criteria for me, because that's what I wanted as a student was I wanted that super good criteria.

Can you hold, think, forgive me. Someone's approaching my door. No, you're fine. ahead. Thank you. I'm so No problem. No problem.

James Moffitt (31:14.017)
So Katie while he steps away from the microphone, what would you say to parents of autistic children? can they handle some of this stuff from a teacher's point of view?

James Moffitt (31:33.431)
think that they need to...

Every kid is different. You can't compare their child to a regular or a child. that's what they have problems with is that parents expect their child to be normal and they're not normal. they're getting on and they just need to to encourage their child to do the best that they can.

James Moffitt (32:15.71)
Yeah, was going to ask you, mean, have, you have autistic children in your classroom and when you're, when you communicate with the, the mom or dad, uh, I know you do IEPs and they sit in on that and, and what, what can the parents add to their, their toolkit or tool chest to, to, um, give them the skills that they need to be more effective parents and to, to augment.

what you're doing in the classroom.

James Moffitt (32:50.679)
thinking, I don't know. I just said that several of our parents, I'm from particular family. It's where the, got upset. Their daughter made a 49 on math. She's in second grade, but her mom's like, she made a 49 and, and it's going to be on her record forever. I'm like, yeah, but she still has two more quarters and she can up the grade. You know, I try to be encouraging, but.

They're just all up at arms about it. And, whenever I've tested her, she ranks at the 49, 55 on the test that I give her. So she's right where, you know, she's not going to get any higher. Um, she's in second grade, but she, her, where she is, her math is kindergarten first grade. So she's not going be able to do second grade stuff. It's going to take a while to get her up there. Yeah. So that.

seems to be frustrating for me and for the parents. how, what is your question? Yeah. So I guess the thing I'm asking is, what, can you, as an educator, how can you equip the parent to be more effective into, I mean, I the parent is not necessarily an educator or a teacher, even though that's part of the role of being a parent, right? Is it's raising our kids, teaching them life skills, you know, passing on our

Yeah. They're the first teachers. Right. So what I guess my question is, and I may not be framing this correctly, but, as, as a teacher, as a special ed teacher, when you're dealing with the parents and the parents that are listening on in our audience, it may have autistic kids or kids with, I forget the term. I keep wanting to say disability. That's not right. Special needs, special needs, James. And

And so I guess the question is you have a parent with special needs. How can we better equip them to understand how to help them at home?

James Moffitt (34:59.337)
I don't know how to answer that. Maybe Christmas has.

You know, you're talking about parents expecting, setting unrealistic expectations of what they want and.

James Moffitt (35:17.935)
Yeah. You'll have to forgive me. The reason I had to step aside is so it is girl scout cookie season. Okay. My wife runs two troops because our daughters are scouts. So as the middle school and the upper elementary school right now, the reason that we have them in scouts is let's be honest. They are not going to be the

The leaders socially, they are not going to be the best at making change or doing any of this stuff. But we know that we have to be realistic that just exposing them to those situations. That's what they need. They, they need to experience the difficulties and the challenges of interacting with people, of running a table, of counting money. They, they need those challenges.

When they get a low grade, they need to know that that's going to happen. They need to know you're sometimes going to fail. And then how you respond to that is what matters. And as parents, I can say, I want you to get A's and B's, but

My youngest is not always going to get A's and B's in English language arts. That's her, you know, she's got, she's got quite a few things that are stacked up against her there with a combination dysgraphia, dyslexic tendencies, a late language development.

If a teacher comes to me and says, daughter is at 35 % in English. I know that that's probably accurate. It's probably accurate. And then my next question, though, as a parent is what can I do at home to help her? Right. And that's what we need to do is we need to teach parents to ask, how can I help you educate my, my child too often parents.

James Moffitt (37:27.913)
They forget, as Katie was saying, they are the first educator. Some forget it, some don't, but once the kid is in school, they're like, well, my part's done now. They're going to go off to the school and the teacher's going to teach them. And I only have to make sure that they take care of hygiene and food. And no, obviously the pandemic proved that the parents need to be involved because when the parents weren't involved, those kids weren't doing the homework. They weren't logging into the computer.

Parents are key to everything. Parents are key to social skills. They're key to the academic skills. They're key to the self-discipline. They're key to the personal hygiene, the medical care. Parents, I understand we're exhausted. I'm exhausted, right? mean, forgive me. I set aside the time for this. I indicated we weren't available.

My autistic traits want to screen that someone came during a time slot when we said we were not available. Hey, that's all right. you know, and I'm sitting here, you know, gripping my hands and using my fidgets, but, life is not going to adapt to me. And I'm not going to completely adapt to life. There's going to be some sort of compromise. Right. We need to tell parents what your child is only in my class Monday through Friday. Let's say math is 45 minutes a day.

There, you're going to have to help with the math on the, in the evenings or on the weekends. You're going to have to ask your child in the car, you know, how many trucks do you see? How many cars do you see? You know, reinforce basic numeracy. I don't know how to say this any better, but parents need to learn to use absolutely everything as an educational experience and talk to the teachers. I know that my

Only children love crafts. They love art. Art is key to them. So when we're doing crafts, we talk about fractions. We talk about multiplication. We talk about how things go together. Um, their current little habit is, um, Perler beads, which are these little plastic beads they put in a pattern and then you iron them to make permanent. well, It's inexpensive. The kids cost, you know, 10 to $20 at your local art and craft stores or even the,

James Moffitt (39:47.969)
department stores and we're finding it teaches them to count. many beads of gray do I need? How many beads of pink do I need? How can I follow the pattern by counting up and over, you know, three points over two points down. Okay. That's a gray dot. everything to us becomes a lesson. And I know that's exhausting for parents.

I know it's extremely exhausting at times. You don't want to feel like everything has to be school, but showing your child how everything is connected really helps them see the value in learning these things. As a parent though, I have to, I have to respect the teacher and the teachers coming back to me and saying your kid's getting a 35 or a 49 or a 70. I have to respect the teacher enough to say, okay, and now how can I help? Right. That's very good. That's good.

You probably don't see it a lot. you Katie? Parents probably don't respond that way. No. They're like, how can we make this, but you know, this 49, how can we make it disappear? Basically, like it's already locked in and you can't, I don't give the grades. It's the regular ed teacher that gives the grades and regular ed teachers blaming me. And I'm saying, I, didn't hand me anything for her to work on.

This kid, I only see them like 150 minutes a week, which is 30 minutes a day. No, actually 120 minutes total for that week makes it 30 minutes a day. That's what I see her for. If the teacher didn't send me anything for her to work on, then we work on her IEP goals, which means goals that I've given her.

Like if she needs help with her ABCs or whatever it is. And that's what we focus on. I don't necessarily focus on what to do in the regular class. yeah, my principal, said, just when you work on IE people, it's not on what the regular teacher does. there's, so there's a disconnect between the regular ed teacher and what you do as a resource teacher. Right. Yeah. And so, we actually have a meeting on Monday.

James Moffitt (42:10.208)
this certain kid, um, the, the team is in without the parents right now. We'll talk to the parents a week from now, but we're trying to figure out a solution of some sort between the regular teacher and myself. What we can do, what we can present to the parents instead of doing the blame game, you know, it's her fault or her, it's her fault. What can we do together to help this child? know, it's like.

Yeah, she made 49. Her reading got better, which is good, but her math has gone down. And that's what tends to happen with kids that are special needs. they, I don't know why it is, but they concentrate on reading for a while. They did really good. And then they go to the next subject like math. are two main, near the core subjects and they'll do really good in math.

And they go back and forth. We're thinking on the year. It's really weird how it ends up being that way. But like right now she's doing better in reading. And her parents are like, well, she didn't need resources for that anymore. Well, yeah, she still does, you know. That's part of her IP. But now we need to concentrate on her math and help her with that. So it should be interesting to find out what we come up with.

James Moffitt (43:38.324)
All right. So I appreciate you explaining that a little more in depth for the parents that are listening. One of the questions I see here that's very interesting, Chris is it says, why do you suggest awareness and tolerance of autistics isn't enough?

James Moffitt (43:57.586)
We can.

We can explain to people why there are more autistic diagnoses. We can explain to people why there seems to be a better awareness, but simply tolerating the student with the disability, simply being aware that the student has a disability doesn't work to include that young adult in the classroom and in the workplace.

Being aware and sort of putting up with someone is not the same as including them and engaging them. Right. Right. And too often what is happening with the autism community is we raise money based on pictures of children. Right. That's just the reality. we look whether, whether it's muscular dystrophy or autism, we put children on the posters. wait, we.

raise awareness and acceptance of the children, but eventually everyone grows up. And once we become adults, being aware of us and kind of tolerating us and okay, well, we'll do this because the ADA says we have to put this ramp in for wheelchairs or okay, we'll widen this door or whatever we have to do, we'll do that. It's not really embracing inclusion. When people just say, well, we're gonna tolerate it and follow the law.

That's not actually what we need. We need people who say, what's on your mind? How can I help you? What do you need for success? need to, we need to move beyond awareness and checklists and start individualizing. know, when, Katie goes into an IEP meeting, the whole point is what does that person need for success? It's not, okay, here's a checklist for

James Moffitt (45:53.79)
these types of students with these labels and here's what we'll do. It's supposed to be in an ideal world now, individualized. And it's not the teacher tolerating the extra work. should be the teacher seeking out new ways to deliver content and seeking out new ways to educate that work for everybody. This we need to, we definitely need to be more inclusive of.

are in our classrooms, in our work spaces, beyond in our community spaces. To me, it's just not enough to say, okay, we're aware of it. We're going to check the boxes on the federal form or the state form and good. did it. That's just not enough. And unfortunately the increased awareness and intolerance of the workload. There are too many teachers and too many employers and too many people in general who just look at it as.

Great. We've got another burden. We've got another thing we have to do. We've got another checklist, another form to file. know, every, every week I've got to file how I modified my lesson plans or the work or the workplace has to say, how did we meet ADA compliance? So the equal opportunity employment commission doesn't get angry. Nobody seems to be doing this because it's the right thing to do. Too many schools and employers are doing it because there's a federal penalty for not doing it. Right.

It's, you know, I don't want my kids to practice music because they're going to get in trouble if they don't practice music. I want them to practice music because they love music. Right. Right. want, you know, I was so excited this weekend, my youngest and, and we call her Ann on the, on the podcast and in the blog. So Ann wanted to learn a musical instrument and she chose sort of on her own that, Hey, you know, I want to learn the clarinet. Like, well, okay. They don't do sure.

You know, and I got her a beginner book and I'm, and I'm working with her. Well, I think it was Monday night. Suddenly I heard the clarinet and I'm like, Whoa, I didn't tell her she had to practice. I didn't make her do it. She wanted to do it. Well, that's how things should be. I, I am so heartbroken as a university instructor, something they noticed early on. I was teaching in a department of economics. The students from other countries were like,

James Moffitt (48:20.414)
Wow, math is cool. Look at all the things about math and wow, this isn't this equation kind of neat how it explains how rockets do this or how money does that. And it's similar math. use a form of calculus in the finance industry. That's also used for rocketry, which is kind of cool. And they got it. They get really excited. My us born us raised students were like, we got to do math because it was never made exciting. It was never made fun. It was never made.

You know, so when, when I think about math, I'm wondering why aren't teachers bringing in, I don't know, it's going to sound silly, but cookie recipes and showing I need a half cup of chocolate chips. What is a half cup? You know, what does a half look like? You know, what is a quarter cup look like? You know, why aren't they doing fun activities and they think, well, we're bringing in manipulatives and Legos now. Kids want to

Adults, adults want to be able to see how the lesson applies to their lives. They want to, if we make everything drudgery, again, going back to that, I have to do it. I have to comply. Then nobody wants to do it and nobody benefits. It just breaks my heart. How many university students tell me I just want the degree to get a job? Well, I understand that, but don't you want to learn something new and exciting? Well,

It's never been new and exciting. And that's because what they're used to at the university is they go into a room of 300 other math students. There's a slideshow and someone talking at the front and there's racing to take notes. There's no excitement. There's no, I don't know, to me, the best teachers are like the science teacher. walk into the class and

For some reason they've got a neat experiment in the front and they make something boil over by mixing some chemicals from your household or they make something exciting happen. You know, they throw the Mentos and the Dr. Pepper and it blows up and the students like, wow, what happened? Well, today we're going to talk about chemical reactions. You know, it's suddenly, right. But we don't approach life that way. You know, for an autistic person, you know, they say we're very black and white, and that's definitely true.

James Moffitt (50:33.33)
I am one of those people who say, why do I have to do this? This sounds stupid. It doesn't sound like it applies to my job. It doesn't apply to my life. Why am I doing X, Y, or Z? And you better give me a reason or I'm just not going to do it. Right. That's where my brain starts to go. But if, if that gifted teacher, that gifted employer can show me why that process or why that lesson is going to help me. Well, then I care.

It's so hard to break through as a parent, know, parents who say, well, you got to do the homework because everyone has to do math or you got to do the foreign language because everyone had to pass two years of foreign language. When the parent sounds like learning is work, well, then of course the child doesn't want to learn. And now the teachers are fighting two people who say that learning isn't fun. And then if some of the teachers, I hate to say it, but I think half my colleagues are in that mindset of

Well, the kids don't want to be here and I can't get them interested. So I'm just going to run the PowerPoint slides and give a test. And we have really failed to make life interesting and fun and exciting. When, you know, I look around and you know, tomorrow I'm going to be out, doing yard work and it's exciting to me because in the spring I, my roses are going to bloom. And so I talked to the girls. Yeah, this is drudgery. We're out cutting the roses back. We're pruning the trees and this is a lot of work, but.

wait till we start seeing the crepe and the crepe Myrtle bloom and the roses bloom. And you know, here's why I'm cutting at this point on the rose and here's why I'm pruning the fruit tree this way. But instead we make everything about, well, it's just work and everyone has to work and that's the way life is. And we don't talk about what's coming and we don't show them and remind them, wow. See how beautiful the roses. Well, do you remember when we did the pruning? Do you remember when we did the deadheading with math?

We never say, wow, look, you're following a recipe. You're baking bread. Look at that. You just used fractions. You just did some math. You mix things and you put them in an oven. So a chemical reaction occurred and you made bread. Isn't that cool? We don't do that. We just, man, I got learned fractions. The way we approach life and I know part of it's cultural because like I said, my students from other countries were like, wow, I can't wait to take an art class.

James Moffitt (52:54.366)
My students born in the U S were like, yeah, they make us take an art class. All right. I look at art and suddenly, you know, I'm the professor in econ saying, my gosh, art. Think about it. You're looking at color ratios, how much red and how much black will make a shade of pink that you want or how much white and red will make the shade of pink you want to, you know, you mix in black to get a hue and my gosh, look at this. You got to know how much paint you're going to need. You got to set up.

I'm looking at this, there's science involved, there's color. Where did the color come from? You know, and then you can talk about, there's a certain blue that only comes from this one type of place in Africa that gives you this blue, this cobalt blue that Van Gogh just had to have. And to me, you can connect all these things, but teachers are so disconnected even from other subjects that, you know, the math teacher doesn't mention how science uses math and the science teacher doesn't mention how art is based on science, you know.

I'm thinking about art again. Perspective is all about math, vanishing points, right? You draw some lines.

James Moffitt (01:48:49.856)
parents don't know that I don't think most parents are aware of what they're doing. So they don't, they don't take the opportunity to use everything as a learning experience. You know, when, when I'm at IHOP with my kids, they like to go to IHOP. It's a nice national chain everyone's familiar with. So they, they'll get their pancake eggs and stuff. And we talk about the receipt. How much did this cost? How much did that cost? Now look at the tax. The tax rate is 8%.

Well, how would we figure out 8 % of $25? And see, I was the last night after we did some stuff, we're eating at IHOP and doing a math lesson. And because I know my kids are struggling with, with fractions and decimals and multiplication and division. Most parents would never do that. I know that most people never do. I just, it breaks my heart. How many adults think that, you know, well, I got to show my kid how to do laundry.

We'll explain to them that we're doing the laundry to help the clothes last longer. And it'll help, you know, kill the germs that cause disease. And this is why we do our laundry and instead of, well, you were supposed to do the laundry. Why didn't you do it? You know, we should give people reasons for things and we should make them learning experiences and adventures. That's, that's great stuff, Christopher. I hate to, I hate to cut in, but we're almost at, we're at the three minute mark. So I need to go ahead and do the outro.

Katie and Christopher, thank you very much for being here on this podcast episode. I've learned a lot actually. And I know that the parents that are listening to this podcast episode, they're dealing with, special needs children in their homes and out in the workplace. I think it's, this is, this episode is going to really help them a lot. And I thank you for your contributions, to the listening audience. And we'll say thank you for the privilege of your time. Thank you for listening to this episode.

You can listen to this podcast on Spotify.

James Moffitt (02:48:18.176)
Also leave a review for any podcast episode that you listen to. We're releasing podcast episodes every Friday and I may actually, thanks to Podmatch and all the quality guests that I get, may actually increase that to two episodes per week at some point. But anyway, thank you so much for listening and Katie and Chris, thank you for being here and everybody just have a wonderful day. Be blessed.