Today, we're going to talk about a time when the world rejected my autistic son despite my advocating for him and how I moved through that in real life. Welcome to the Autism Diagnosis to Confident Mom podcast with Kira from Kira Brown Coaching. I'm a mom of Neurospicy Kids and a life coach. I'm here to share real tips and support to help you feel confident as a parent. Today, let's get live and vulnerable with A Way the World Rejected My Autistic ADHD kiddo and how I dealt with that. So Monday this week, I was at work and my boss came and found me and was like, when you get a minute, can we talk? We need to figure out another plan for your son to get home. And I was like, what? So I um, for those of you who don't know, my elementary school age children go to an after school program because they we live so far out of town they only send one bus. And because they only send one bus, we have to wait an hour for the middle school and high schoolers to get out of school before they send the bus. So they would send my children to this after school program for an hour, and then they would get on the bus and come home. And we've been doing this for almost two years now. It had been working really well, except for the last five months. We had a change in leadership and things weren't going so great, and they decided that my aunt's to kiddo was unsafe in their environment and couldn't be there. So I received a text message from them 20 minutes before the school day ended saying that he was not welcome anymore. Luckily, I was in town at work already, and I could just take him with me. But I was like blindsided, right? I had no idea this was coming. Um and I'm at work, so like I just keep going. I'm like, I didn't even get to read the whole, like, I read the first couple sentences of this type's letter that they texted to me, and and then I had to keep going with my job. I sub at the school, and so I had to keep kids going. I couldn't drop what I was doing to feel my feels, and so I had to just keep going. So I go and talk to the my boss, the principal, and luckily I have to be in town every day this week. So I'm like, this week I will just pick him up from school, take him with me, I'll rearrange my life, make that work, and then we can figure something out that gives us a little more time. She says, Great. So we do that. I go and get them, I take them, we go and do the things that we do after school, run our errands, and one of the errands is my kid's in an appointment, and I am sitting in the waiting room, and I just start bawling in this waiting room, and I'm trying not to cry, I don't want to feel my emotions, I don't want to feel anything, and at this point, I'm feeling sadness because they have not treated him well, they have not worked with us to meet his needs, in my opinion, and I feel like it's very unfair. So this is sadness. I feel sadness, and then I feel anger, and then and I'm I'm out and about running errands, doing the things I'm supposed to be doing, and I'm feeling all of these things, and I'm pushing through, I'm just getting through the moment, right? I'm in survival mode. So we finish with our errands, and we're driving home, and I put on music that I'm comfortable with that I like that's comforting to me. Uh, side note, I have ADHD, and that is a stim, if you would say, of mine is listening to songs that I like over and over again. So I put on this music that I like and I just allow myself to cry. I, like I said, I feel sadness for the way that he's been treated and for the opportunities that he's missing out on. I feel anger because he feels like a horrible kid when I don't feel like it was his fault that he was asked to not come back. I feel self-pity because this means I now either in my brain, I now either have to go to school every day and work every day, which I didn't want to. I wanted to have a day or two off to come and help you guys, or I don't send my son to school on the days that I don't go in and sub, but then that leaves him absent two to three days a week. And so I feel like there's this choice like, do I pick what I want to do, or do I pick what's good for my son? And I'm I am feeling self-pity because I feel like the obvious answer is I have to send my son to school. I have to, I'm feeling some self-pity that this is going to affect my life because I had just figured out how to get this to work. I feel shame and embarrassment that my son was kicked out of a program. I've never had a child kicked out of a program before, and I feel some deep shame and I want to hide. I feel grief because of the things that I'm losing. All of these are happening at the same time. It's big emotions. So my body knew what to do with those emotions. So when I finally allowed myself to just have whatever emotion I was going to have because I was now safe in my car driving the 60 miles home, I cried. I cried and I cried, and then I'd stop crying, and then it would come back and I would cry some more. I had a really good cry on the way home. Um, so that's the first thing is I felt all of my emotions, even while life was carrying on. Um, I didn't do great at not crying in public. The medical provider that we were seeing noticed I was crying and sent me a text message to make sure I was okay. Like I didn't, I wasn't all put together in public. I allowed myself to be sad and angry and have self-pity and all of the things. The one thing I didn't allow myself to have was the shame. Um, Brene Brown, a shame researcher, has taught us that shame loves the dark, it loves secrecy. And so if we don't share our experience, shame grows and we feel worse. But if we share with somebody who's safe to share with, then it will dissipate and go away. And so that's what I did. I recognized that I was feeling shame. I named it, and then I said, What friend am I safe to share this with? And I texted a friend or two. When the medical provider texted me and asked me if I was okay, I said, I'm feeling some big emotions right now. My son was just kicked out of the after school program. Um, I wasn't at this point, I wasn't trying to problem solve how was he going to get home every day? I wasn't. I was just feeling emotions. And you know what? People are great. When I shared my experience, they said, What? That's not fair. That's awful. I'm so sorry you're going through this. I wish I was there to hug you, praying for you. Okay, but I shared the shame so that it would go away because that's an emotion I don't have to feel. Um, another thing I did was I gave myself time. I was like, today I just want to feel bad about this. I am going to allow myself to just feel bad. We're gonna do something easy for dinner. I'm gonna put on my pajamas. I'm gonna eat whatever I want. I'm gonna eat my emotions. I'm going to buffer by watching Netflix until my husband gets home because he was um out of class and wasn't home until 9 o'clock at night. Like, I'm just gonna let the kids be. We're not, we're not gonna push it tonight. I don't have to be on my A game. Okay, I gave myself time to just wallow in my emotions, to feel them, to allow them. And then Tuesday morning, I started problem solving. And the funny thing is, is when you come from problem solving, because on Monday night, I felt like my only option was I had to go to work every day and pick him up every day, or he couldn't go to school because there wasn't an option. But after I felt my feelings and I've dealt with them, and I come from a clean space from now what do I do? I came up with an idea, and he's just gonna get on the bus, he's gonna ride the route, and then he's gonna sit on the bus. Like he'll be on the bus an extra hour, but he can get home without missing school and without me having to work every day, and I can I pot an iPad and he can watch some cartoons and it'll be some downtime, hopefully, and and it'll be fine. He'll have to do that for seven days for the rest of the school year. I'm like, it'll be fine. I came up with a problem, with a solution, but Monday night I was not in a space where I could solve the problem, so I allowed myself time to feel the emotions. I've also stopped and thought about what kind of person do I want to be? Who do I want to be in this situation? Monday I wanted to call the director of the afterschool program up and rip her a new one and tell her how awful she was and how unfair and unjust and all of the things, and but I didn't. But now I've decided that it is the loving and kind thing if I continue to advocate for my son. I don't think he's gonna get back in the program. That's not the point of advocating, but I want to advocate for other children as well. So I'm going to write a letter to the board of directors letting them know that they were not working with my child because part of their company is that they are inclusive and they include everyone, and they want the best for everybody, and I don't feel like they were inclusive and including, and so and I don't feel like they followed through on the plans that we made so that he could succeed there. So I'm gonna write a letter to the board of directors and just let them know that I don't feel like their vision is being met, and this is the experience that we had. I don't know what will come of it, but I'm deciding to advocate afterwards. You don't have to advocate afterwards, that's up to you. That is an optional step. But the important thing was I just allowed myself to have emotions. If you get nothing else out of this, feel the feels, let them come, let them be. It's okay to feel them. You're not a bad mom, you're not a bad person. I didn't judge myself when I went into self-pity because I thought I was gonna have to give up helping you guys, um, which is what I enjoy doing the most. I just felt those feelings. Feel those feelings. You can set a timeline. I'm going to allow myself to feel this way for a day, for two days, for a week, whatever you decide, and then you can move on and problem solve and decide what kind of person you want to be. Do you want to be the kind of person that advocates on the back end, even if it doesn't change anything? Do you want to be, you just want to move on and focus on helping your child move forward, whatever you want to do. But we can do this, mama. We can. Unfortunately, in our world, it's not a matter of if somebody rejects our child, it's a matter of when. And to me, that is harder than dealing with the autism. It rips my heart out because I can't fix it for my child. But we can make it through, and we can continue on, and we can continue to help them, and we can continue to educate in the world. You're doing better than you think you are. I know that because you're here trying to figure out how to help. Keep up the good work, and we'll catch you next time. Thanks so much for listening to Autism Diagnosis to Confident Mom. If this episode helped you feel a little more seen or supported, please take a moment to like, follow, or subscribe to the podcast. And if you know another parent who needs to hear this, share it with them too. We're all in this together. You're doing better than you think, Mama. You've got this.