 Good day, my lovely listeners! You are listening to The Forty Autie Podcast. Tune in every week to explore inspiring stories and insightful information that dive headfirst into the world of autism and mental health. With all those tantalising tongue twisters out of the way, let's get into the show. Today's podcast episode is proudly sponsored by Teemo, the award-winning app designed to support neurodivergent people just like yourself with routine and scheduling. Head to your app store and type T-W-I-M-O to learn more. Good day, good sirs and good madams. Welcome back to another episode of The Forty Autie Podcast. How are you doing today? This is episode 23 and it is the first one that I've done after a long, long time of not doing podcasts. I usually sort of bulk make them and then put them out and edit them and put them out over a long period of time. So this is the most recent up-to-date one. I recently had a thought that I should probably include a wider variety of people on the podcast. I usually stick to interviewing over autistic people about their experiences. I wanted a little bit of a different angle on the autistic experience. So today I am joined by Michelle Brogas. How are you doing, Michelle? I'm good, how are you? I'm all right today, not too bad. It's actually Michelle Rogers, but I had to put my middle initial in my Instagram because there was another Michelle Rogers on there already. Okay, not Brogas. No, no. But that sounds good. I was thinking that that was quite an Americanized surname or something. Definitely not. So yes, Michelle Rogers, yes. Michelle B Rogers. There you go. Okay. Well, today we are here to talk about being a parent advocate. We're going to talk all about different ways of parenting an autistic child. And hopefully I think you've got a lot to give to this little podcast. So let's get right into it. Great. Would you like to give everybody a little bit of a background to who you are and what you do online? Sure. My name is Michelle Rogers, and I've founded Champions for Our Children. It's a online coaching program. So basically I have a couple of different options. We have one-on-one coaching, which is what I've done for years. I've worked with parents locally and now globally to help them create a pathway for progress for their children. We are launching at the end of October a self-study course called Advocating Like a Boss. That'll be out, I believe, October 25th. And that is trying to just get parents, if they can't work with me one-on-one, they can take this course and hit the ground running on their own. I kind of just put all of my secret sauce into it in the sense of what were the game changers, what were the needle movers to help me to make the most momentum for my daughter. And I put it into that course. And then we are going to be coming out, I think, after the new year we're going to do a group coaching class, which would be an online experience with group coaching involved so that all parents can kind of get to know each other and we can kind of collectively work through our individual goals together. And that would be like the Champions for Our Children masterclass. So that's kind of what my online presence is right now. That's brilliant. What initially spouts my curiosity and thought about doing a podcast was that in my journey I focus quite primarily on autistic people and trying to help them advocate for themselves. Whereas with yourself you work with the parents of those autistic children. So I thought it would be good to kind of contrast them, see what comes of it. Yeah, absolutely. So besides obviously being a life coach and founding this program, I am also a mother of a child with special needs. My daughter was diagnosed on the spectrum in December of 2012. So I remember that time very vividly for me. When she was born there was always these vivid ideas and dreams of what I thought her future would look like. And I was super excited and so grateful to be able to even be a mother. And I just had so many expectations for her and then once she got diagnosed it all kind of went black for me. Not even just the thoughts of what potential future she could have but I just didn't even know what to do with myself. I was in a really emotionally dark space myself and just now that I'm on the other side of this, my daughter's seven now, I want to create a program that I wish was available when I was going through this to help parents get to good momentum quicker. So that's why I'm doing this. I think it's a very admirable thing to do. I think a lot of people within the autistic community, even myself to some degree, sort of have, you know, like when people talk about, oh no, like the life is over because the child has autism, our sort of like initial feelings on that is like, why? Why would you say that with us? We're autistic, we're on that kind of stuff. But for someone who doesn't come from an understanding of sort of autism and don't really understand what that means for their child's life and what means for them, I guess it could be quite sort of a scary thing, like with all the stigmas attached to it. Would you say that's right? Absolutely. And my experience or my exposure to it at that point was like nothing. So from what I did know of it, my sister happened to be a BCBA. So, you know, however the cards fell the way they did, she happens to be a BCBA that's a board certified behavior analyst. Their primary focus is to work with children on the spectrum. She of course was the first one to see the signs and I was in complete denial. And I was like, oh, you're projecting your work onto my child. And I remember thinking, you know, when I would talk to her about her work, even before I had kids, I said, you know, do any of these kids ever like have an independent life? And she worked with more severe cases. And she said, most don't. So when this happened to us, yeah, my mind immediately went to the, to the, you know, I was absolutely terrified, I didn't know what was going to happen. Yeah. And I can imagine, I can imagine like how difficult that must sound. It's, I think in a lot of cases, that's mostly due to all the stigmas that are surrounding, you know, like autism and stuff, you know, you're going to have those reactions if, you know, you start comparing what your child's future is going to be like with what you would consider to be autistic, if that makes sense. Yeah, especially because, you know, you're told that the child like all you know, if you've had no exposure to autism is that your child's not meeting milestones. They're probably not speaking. Usually that's one of the telltale signs where you're bringing somebody in for evaluation. They're doing peculiar things. So yeah, your mind goes right to the most negative scenario you could possibly imagine because you don't know any better, you haven't been exposed to anything otherwise. So yeah. So when this kind of gets thrown into the mix, I mean, it could send you in a tailspin for sure. Yeah. And I think something that, you know, people may not know is that, you know, in the initial stages of me getting a diagnosis, my mom was, I think she describes it as being quite, you know, the same. So being in a bit of denial, not really knowing whether the autism label would benefit me in any way. So she definitely went through those stages as well. But it wasn't, you know, it wasn't like a hateful thing. Like, you know, some people would think of it was just, you know, you don't feel like your child's going to have the ability to succeed in life as much as you would hope them to, or especially with autism, there is a lot of sort of social deficits that happen, particularly like in childhood. So there's a lot of difficulty surrounding it, even just with like comorbidities and anxiety and depression, like there's a whole mixed bag of things. And I guess, would you say that your work with other parents and stuff helps them to understand the situation a little bit better, and sort of, I guess, corrects their mindsets and view of autism to a more realistic one? Well, you know, no matter what it is, you don't want to hear that there's something not, something not right with your child. And I'm not saying that autism makes somebody not right, but it makes for a more challenging scenario, because you learn differently, you communicate differently. So from that aspect, there is going to still be a process that you need to go through. I call it that it's grief, it's the five stages of grief is legitimately what you'll go through as a parent. And a lot of it may come from inexperience or minimal exposure to what the spectrum of autism could look like. But when I work with parents, it really depends on where they are in the, in the mix of things. So I could be working with I spoke to a mother today who just got diagnosed, her son just got diagnosed in March. So she's still like in the, she doesn't really even know what to do kind of phase right in the middle of like probably she was in a little bit of a denial, I guess, when we started talking, then probably near the middle of it, there's there's the five stages of grief, there's denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. So I say she's right in the middle somewhere, she's probably between bargaining and depression, where she's just trying to figure out like, she's now kind of still in disbelief that this has happened to them. She had two typical children that developed properly that didn't have any delays. She's still trying to work through that. So I guess depending on where I land when I meet them, we have to first figure out if the grief process has been fully kind of pushed through already. So for me, I had to go through that from my personal experience, I had to go through all of that before I could potentially get on the horse, so to speak, and start to take action in a way that would benefit her future, however it may fall. So what I tell parents is I say, listen, you know, we work together, I'm going to help you to kind of get clear and get you on a path towards progress for your children. But I can't, I'm not guaranteeing a result. What I can say is that as a mother, as a father, when we were planning on having children, the job of parenting has not changed. The plan of parenting this child has not changed. Just some of the aspects around this specific child have changed, but the actual parenting is still your responsibility. So you just need to kind of get yourself back into that state you were in before the diagnosis and say, listen, if the child was physically sick, you would get him medicine. If the child is not meeting milestones, we need to get them therapies. And we need to not look at this as something like a death sentence. So that's another thing we want to hit home. This is not cancer. This is something that, look at yourself, there's plenty of adults living quality lives with autism. My goal for them is because I'm usually coaching parents of children, like probably 10 and under, is to help them be the best parents they can be so that when they hit the pillow at night, they know that they did everything they could to give their child the best chance at a light, at a good life. And that's not just a goal for an autism parent. It's a goal for every parent. It should be a goal for every parent. You hit the head, you've hit, head hits the pillow at night. I did everything I could to give my kid the best shot at a good life. And that's kind of like where I'm really kind of putting their focus back. They have to get out of the grief. I help them the process through it if they haven't already. And then we kind of get back on the horse, so to speak, on what we need to do to be a good parent for these children. I can imagine that there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of pitfalls as well that some parents can get into like trying to cure them or trying to find this this miracle way of parenting that's just going to work for every single autistic child and it's going to be amazing and you're not even going to tell and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of like, especially I've seen in sort of America, there's kind of a lot of companies that sort of set themselves up and they're all very different from each other, but they don't necessarily have kind of that wholesome encompassing of the basics of autism. Like some don't take into account that things like stimming or sensory things do not harm, well, in most cases do not harm for people, so they're okay to do. There's a lot of that different kind of stuff that a lot of things that contradict each other. Yeah, there's a lot of wonky things out there. It's almost like the Wild Wild West. I remember this was before I was even a parent. I wasn't even married and I went with my sister to a conference for autism therapies and I guess products people had to help children with autism and it was insane. I could tell it was total scam. They're trying to sell nutrition, they're trying to sell bariatric chambers and supplements and I'm not saying that there couldn't be some validity to some things, but like to just come in there with this like cure all for autism and I'm going to be 100% honest here. When we first kind of entered the club, that's what I kind of call it, I call it like this club and when I had a plan of getting out of the club, it was always my mission to get out of the club. I thought I could recover her from this. I'm being straight up and as she's gotten older, I've come to the, my come to Jesus moment sort of came a couple like a summer ago where I realized that even though we may have tackled the basics of a child with autism, meaning she's now in a integrated second grade classroom with typical peers in a Gen N school, she's doing amazing. She really is, but as she grows older, it's not like this would disappear. As she grows older, new challenges arrive that are age appropriate. So that was the, yeah, that was really the come to Jesus moment I call it so to speak for me where I thought I was just gonna, you know, I used to equate it to prison. I'm like, I'm in prison right now. We're just doing our time. We're getting our GED and we're getting out of this club. Whereas your time, we're getting out of here. And now I think I've come around full circle and I said, you know, this is something she's going to live with for the rest of her life, but I'm going to give her all the tools possible to give her every advantage to have whatever she needs to be happy. And that's just been my focus since I came full circle with that, that we are going to continue to have challenges and we have to address them specific to her the way she thinks and the way that she feels. It's different than the way I think and feel. So it's actually a new language. It is. It's like a new language. And by being so hands on with her, it's teaching her that she can start to advocate for herself. And that's what I think is so important on why we should start this early, not just for the betterment of the child for the child's outcome at that moment. But we also want to teach the child mommy did this for me so that I could have this, I need to be able to speak up for myself to do this as an adult with autism, because I need to advocate for my specific needs. So that's another thing that I think is just so that's a reward that I hadn't anticipated. This is that now she's being given the tools to start to communicate for herself in the way that is most comfortable for her, which I think is a really great thing. Making those adjustments so that you can accommodate your child rather than trying to push them into a certain mold. To cure them. Exactly. The ideals. Yeah. Yeah. I understand. I sympathize with that feeling. I wanted this to go away too. You know what I mean? Honestly, when I was 14, I thought the same thing. I was trying to get rid of it. Yeah. I know. I think a lot of autistic people feel that at some point in their life, particularly childhood, when it's so difficult. But yeah, I've been reading a lot recently, and there's this book called Neurotribes. And just the thing that you were saying about the diet and stuff like that, there was definitely a large market of companies. Yeah, it's almost like it's cold like, too. It's absolutely, it feels cold like. I mean, we were a part of a clinical trial for infusing children on the spectrum with stem cells. It was done by Duke University. It's an IULEE school here in the States. And I did it just, you know, I had banked her cord blood. I always felt connected to doing that. But I never looked at it like it was going to be the silver bullet for us. There's just no such thing. And it was interesting. I had created a group on Facebook for it. And just to find other parents that might be going down the weekend that we were, they only took 180 kids in that study. I have close to 43, probably close to 5,000 members of that group looking for this Holy Grail experience. And then, you know, I kind of regret it now that it grew so big the way it did. Not that I don't regret having the group. I just want to be 100% clear that this isn't, we're not looking for a cure here. You know what I mean? It's that if you want to look for supports, like a certain type of diet or a treatment, I'm okay with that. But I don't want everybody to put all their eggs in that basket. Because you're just setting yourself up for that failure again. And then you're right back into that grief stage. That's why getting out of grief, making sure you've processed those emotions 100% has to happen before you can start doing actions like that. Because if you do that after the fact, then there is no expectation of this miracle. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I think at the least, those kind of miracle curial kind of stuff is a massive money vacuum that you could be spending better. And secondly, you're always got that ideal child in the back of your mind that you're trying to shoot for that just doesn't exist. And you sort of miss a large part of them growing up and bonding with them. As you said, being hands on and sort of watching them grow because you're always sort of shooting for this ideal, I guess. Yes, exactly. You're always fighting. You're not at present with this child that is just this little adorable person. This is your little person. You're just focusing on this person that you want them to be instead of being in the moment, enjoying the person that they are. And that's a part of this too. You have to really kind of, I mean, yeah, of course, I'm always looking to help her to be stronger and give her whatever tools, but we also want to just stop and just enjoy our children for who they are. Yeah. And there's a lot to say for that. Yeah, there sure is. It's definitely a different way of bonding with your child. But once you get that, once you get on their wavelength, it can be really nice because a lot of people don't really understand autistic people. So if you can be that person who understands how they work, understands what they find hard and what they find easy and trying to work around that, then it's a beautiful thing. It really is. It's amazing. And we had, I'm just going to share this example, she had a dentist appointment and we muddled through the cleaning. I mean, it was halfway disaster, muddled through the dental cleaning. And then the dentist tells me she's got two cavities. And I was ready to cry, because I'm like, how are we going to get through two fillings? I barely made it through this cleaning. And I took them with a special interest. I took it back to our home team, because we have a home team for her. Even though she's doing amazing and fabulous, we still work on goals and stuff. And we created a plan to kind of prepare her for what was to happen. And it was really beautiful thing. They created a social story around it. They showed her videos of children getting cavities filled. I ended up going on Amazon buying like the gas mask, just the mask just so she can get used to it being over her nose. That's so cute. Yeah, we did it on her dolls at home. We sat in the waiting room even before we actually went there. We gave her a break card so she could just hold up this card when she needed a break and then the dentist would stop. We gave her sunglasses. I mean, I can't believe like the amazing things you can do to really bring it together for her. And then when the day came, I mean, she did, I was ready to have a panic attack because I was terrified and how it was going to go. But she did amazing because we had prepared her and given her the tools to process this experience. So I mean, yeah, I just wanted to say that because I mean, even though I was terrified, we went through this together. All of that time we spent to prepare for that, we sat down, we played with the dolls, I read her the story every night. These are moments of connection with your children. Yeah. Well, just for, just for an idea, because I know we're talking about this ideal for sort of your mind sector parenting and what is, if you could sort of sum up the ideal parents in your mind, what would that person be like? What would that person be like? I guess that person would be, I want to see somebody who could process their emotions. That was probably the biggest struggle I had with it. Process your emotions around this, really kind of understand that autism is a spectrum. One of the things I didn't investigate, which I wish I did now, and I would, I would advocate this for parents 100% is to watch content of adults with autism specifically, to see what the potential possibilities could be like. That might help a little bit. It still doesn't, it still hurts. It's still, you're going to expect it to hurt, it is going to hurt. But at least you can see that there is a potential outside of like your worst thoughts around it. So I guess the first thing I would say is for the ideal, I guess parent mindset is number one is the education of self, learning, you have to process your emotions around this. And then I want to see a, I am a solutions driven individual. I'm absolutely obsessed and put, I was obsessed and possessed with her speaking. And I'm not in a negative way, not to the point where I was going to torture her to get it, but I just remember vision. I was going to say, yes, no, we don't want to torture children. I am absolutely, yes, that's a no on the full TLC podcast. Yeah, we don't torture children. I am all about positive reinforcement, everything we do now, I mean, it's literally like if I make an ask, she wants to know what she's going to get in return for it. But, but like, I visualized her talking to me. It was one of the things that I thought was really helpful too. I imagined what it would be like to hear her say, I love you, or hear her have a conversation, or hear her watch her make friends in my mind, I would kind of visualize that. So that's another thing I kind of keep my mind in the space of what I want and what it would look like. And it just kind of like would, it would be like this rolling film in my head that I would just go over and over and over with, even during the the challenging times to say, this is what I want, this is what I'm thinking. So this is, I guess that would be another part of it is just a parent that's driven and obsessed and possessed in the sense that they're visualizing the outcome that they'd love to see for their child. And then the other thing realistic, yes, that's realistic, fair enough. But, or, you know, this is the thing, you know, there's still reels that go in my mind that she hasn't been able to do yet. I'm okay with whatever the outcome will be, but I can still visualize it. So I'm not going to like push it on to her. But I'm going to still, I can still have my vision of what she might become, you know, but you know, even with my son, even with my son, and he's he's not on the spectrum. He does things I never thought I'd have to deal with either. So I mean, it's a you know, parenting is just period a challenge typical or atypical parenting is a challenge. So I don't know. And I guess the last thing I would think of for the ideal parent scenario is somebody who is not deterred, who doesn't just give up when the going gets tough acknowledges that this is going to be a challenge. This is going to be a different challenge than we were signing up for. And that to push through the setbacks, you know what I mean, like, don't ever not like, don't ever put your hands up and white flag it. Because if you white flag it, your kids, your kids done, give their child the happy the chance of the happiest life possible. That's brilliant. What one thing that I like about your approach is it's very similar to my mom's sort of my mom is the absolute she is the absolute gem. She is supportive. I trust her. She trusts me. We speak about our emotions. We we try and help each other out. And she's always had the best intentions for me. And she does she does push she did push me to to grow, you know, in terms socially, she'd taken into lots of social classes so that I've got the experience. She'd explained to me the different aspects of autism, you know, there is a lot of utility in sort of being that that rock for your child, you know, being that one person that really gets you and having that as a mom is just is awesome. Having that sort of holistic and focus around sort of positive reinforcement and, you know, having those sort of realistic expectations and those understandings, I think is is a very useful thing. Agreed. I can't imagine can you imagine what your life would be like if you didn't have a mom like that? Or if you had a mom that was focused on all of the wrong things or trying to change you and what that would look like. Yeah, I would I would be a, you know, just considering like the amount of mental health that I have just from life experiences outside of, you know, outside of home like at school and stuff, I wouldn't be able to I don't think I'd be able to pull through if I didn't have, you know, such supportive parents. It definitely is a really important thing, especially due to, you know, all the social isolation and bullying and mental health that often coincides with an autism diagnosis. You've got to be the person that comforts them, the person that understands them. Definitely, especially when they're little, because you're their only shot, period. Yeah. You know. So it's time for a quick mention from our sponsors, Timo. If you love visual support in your scheduling, Timo is for you. The app was designed for people with ADHD and autism and helps empower users to schedule visual routines that work. Users say that Timo can help reduce stress and support executive function, which are both two things that I struggle with myself. Learn more at www.timoapp.com or just type in T-Dub-L-I-M-O into your search bar. Thanks so much to my Patreon supporters, Patrick Vedy, Malmakati, and Julian Marks, of course. All of this support means so much to a little podcasting dreamer like myself. Anyway, let's get back into the show. So one of the questions that I wanted to ask was sort of phases, but I think we've touched on that a little bit. But do you have like... Are you talking about for like the stages of grief? Yeah. Well, what could you give us like an example of how parents change over the course of you sort of chatting to them and helping them out? Where did they start and where did they go? Sure. So the first thing I talk to them about specifically is just to get some information on their children first. So I literally spend the first half of any conversation getting to know their children. When did they start to notice something was off? What was the triggering event to that? Have they gotten a diagnosis? Believe it or not, there are a ton of undiagnosed children. That's been surprising me lately is how many children that are from what I can tell from my experience definitely on the spectrum and they're not getting the diagnosis that they need. You have to pay for it in America, don't you? No. Between the ages of two and three, you can get early intervention. That's a federally funded program. So it's either early start. It's usually called early start or early intervention. So that's what we had gotten our diagnosis through. Then after that, you would go through the school district above the age of three. It's not impossible to get it from a district, but it is a challenge because now it's going to cost them money to support it. Then if you can't get a district to come on board with the proper diagnosis for that, you can go to your private, you can go to a developmental pediatrician here. You can go to a certain child neurologist. You can do psychiatrist, psychologist. They can all diagnose children, but I think the reason why there are so many that are undiagnosed is probably two reasons. Number one is the parents aren't seeking it out because they don't know and they're just thinking that the child's just got some delays and then the other reason is the parents are in straight denial and that's the first part of grief. So depending on where a parent is at, when I talk to them and I'm asking specifically about the child, I want to know how far through the stages of grief are they. If they have a diagnosis, obviously they've probably passed denial because there's no really denying it in your face. Sometimes you have that. You'll have a parent who even has a diagnosis and doesn't really believe it. When this happened to us or when my sister was starting to point to things that my daughter was or wasn't doing, I was in straight denial. I was like, oh, they benefit if they say she's got it. Then came the anger with that. You open pandil. I'm really mad at my sister and I have guilt to that to this day. I apologize now obviously because she probably saved her life in the sense of got us on the train to progress. I said to her, I was angry with her that she had kind of like threw us in this boat and pushed us out to sea with not even knowing what to do. In the sense of like, we can't undo what's been now said to us. Then after that, I was trying to the next part of grief is the bargaining stage, which is really just the you're bargaining either with yourself, with the child, with the healthcare professionals, you're trying to get some type of commitment as to when this is going to go away. It's really a very complex area when we're dealing with half the problem is the parents. The one thing you're dealing with is the diagnosis. The other part that you're really dealing with is the parents. Then we get past that part and we realize this isn't going to be an easy quick fix thing. There's not something that I can just give the kid a pill and it's going to go away. Then you go into your depression mode, what does this mean? This is where we lose most parents. This is where white flagging comes in. That's what I call white flag when they've thrown in the towel, they've given up on their kid. They just let the system bring the kid through whatever education they feel is right, not necessarily with your input and whatever happens happens. Maybe we get a handful of kids that are lucky and they get into a system that really is supportive and looking out for the child's benefit and the kid does thrive, but most of the times that's not what happens. Then we got a lot of autistic adults who really dislike their experience of life. Had bad horrible experiences with ABA. How could you let them do this to me? How could you let me go through this? I can't even imagine. That would be a real nightmare scenario for me. Then the final stage, if processed correctly, so usually we lose everybody by depression, is acceptance. This is such an important piece because it's like, okay, this is where we are, but this doesn't mean that this is the end of all. I accept that this has been thrown in our lap. I'm not happy about it, but what can I do to bring happiness, the most happiness I can to my child? This is kind of where we go. The first half of my conversation with a parent I'm just starting to speak to is to get an idea of where their kid's at and kind of get a feel of where they're at, because I have to make you mentally, emotionally, physically fit for this. Otherwise, we can't really proceed with any type of plan to help the child. They've got to be open to different mindsets and different ways of thinking about the diagnosis. I won't waste time. There's too many children that need support. I won't waste time with a parent that's closed-minded that can't get out of their own way. If I see that, I kind of just say, okay, listen, I don't think we're going to be a good fit to and there are plenty of, unfortunately, there's plenty of parents that need help that want help around this. One of the actual, the crazy things about autistic children getting diagnosed is because autism is quite heavily genetic, a lot of parents that I've spoken to when they go to a diagnosis, they either get diagnosed themselves or a partner that's not around or something for that kid. In hindsight, it displayed a lot of autistic traits. I think one of the issues may be, in a lot of those cases, is if the parent isn't diagnosed and they are autistic, then they're not going to see any problem with their kid, because they'll just see them as acting as they should do. These delays are not bad. This happened to me, that kind of thing. Does that ever happen? I guess in a scenario like that, I would assume, and you tell me if I'm wrong, the child's maybe more of a mild form of autism? They display more characteristics of aspergers. Got it, yes. When I'm usually working with parents, it's usually right around the diagnosed age of two up until maybe 10, and if we're communicating, there's usually some major disruption to quality of life for the whole family because of the child. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean a nonverbal child is going to have a really difficult time with autism. My daughter was nonverbal, and she was tantruming. I spoke to a woman this morning, her son is biting. That doesn't mean that the outcome is going to be shitty at the end of the day. What that means is that it needs to be addressed immediately before it becomes a problem that we can't help or support as they get older. I guess that is possible. When a parent's coming to speak to me, they're probably in that desperate state that they know something needs to change for the sake of their child. Definitely, I could see that. My husband had said when she first diagnosed, oh, I gave this to her. I'm like, let's not even go there. I don't even know what this is. I don't even know what this is. He's already got gave it to her. I'm like, well, let's just figure this out first. I think there are tendencies in her I could see in myself. There's tendencies in her I could see in my husband. I think we all, nobody, there's no perfection in people. Even my son can have anxiety or he can feel, you know, he could have a hard time expressing emotions and dealing with certain scenarios. Everyone, I think, has a touch of something. You know what I mean? But when I'm talking to parents, I usually, they're in a pretty frantic state because we have some problem behavior we need to hopefully work through. I completely understand that. Being a special needs teaching assistant, I do have to work with some sometimes quite challenging children. It's less about them being autistic and more the sort of behavioral issues that may come with that from them not understanding around those ages can be sometimes quite difficult for some kids. Because obviously, they may think the world works in a certain way, but they're not really appreciates that it may not and other people might be different until they sort of reach kind of teenagehood and they start to realize that maybe people are kind of a bit different to them. So I know we've talked a lot about the wrong kind of mindset to have and you've sort of talked about some of the barriers as well to be honest. Do you think there's any there's any points in your calls or anything that you can see that there's sort of pop-up, there's sort of lead parents down the wrong track in terms of sort of helping that kid and learning to parent better? If I feel like, you know, this is the unfortunate, you know, I wish I could help every child, every family I come in contact with, but they're not my children at the end of the day. They're theirs. And if I feel like I can't make a breakthrough here, it's really a waste of both our times. And I'm going to say prayers for your child, you know what I mean? I'm just going to hope that maybe you'll come back around in your way of thinking if I feel like they're saying things or that don't align with what I feel would be best supportive around their children. I do a pre-qualification call before I do any one-on-one coaching specifically. And we're going to do this for the group coaching program after the new year that that'll be out as well, just to make sure that we're speaking to parents that are not in some type of state that I feel would be detrimental to their children, if that makes any sense. I mean, I understand that if they're still going through grieving and depression and anger, I can deal with that. But if we're going to be like almost to the point where we're going to be hurting our children mentally or emotionally, I'm not on on board for that. So that we are going to be pre-qualifying anybody we speak with, because I just, I wish I could help every child, but, you know, not every child is my child. Yeah, I completely understand that. That's sometimes one of the difficulties of teaching as well. You can see what could possibly help them and some of the harm that parents may be sort of inflicting on them unknowingly. It's helped. It feels so helpless. Listen, I'm not perfect. I know I've made mistakes with my daughter too, but I try and I write those wrong as soon as I realize I've made them. You know what I mean? And I think that, like, you know, I wish more parents really just went back to the basics of think about when they were, when you were expecting this child. Parenting was still on the list of what you were going to do when they were born that does not change with us. And we need, and parenting was always a loving, supporting, teaching, education. None of that's changed. So just because the child is different than what you had maybe anticipated, the job is still the same. So let's talk a little bit about parenting and teaching styles. So in the autistic community, most people are very adverse to certain types of therapy. I think we've already mentioned it. I don't want to like highlight it too much because I know that it's like a, I don't want to be done with like slander or anything, but we don't know what we're talking about. There's certain types of therapy and and sort of organizations that preach, you know, if done wrong can be very brutal in nature. And very sort of harmful to the kids, which is something that we hear a lot from autistic adults who've gone through those processes. What is your opinion on those very specific forms of teaching? And what sort of approach to parenting seems to be the most productive? So, you know, I know that I've spoken to adults as well that may have been exposed to very not supportive therapies that clinically would prove to be successful with children on the spectrum, but we're not very kind in application. So I guess as a parent, the first thing we need to understand is that most parents are not educated in the field of communicating with a child on the spectrum. So the first thing is education. I did as much reading and watching videos and listening to audio as much as possible on the topic of autism specifically, just to understand what it meant and what it looked like. Then the other thing is that I was very lucky in the sense because my sister was a BCBA, so she was already working in this field. While being exposed to this, not even knowing it was going to be a part of my life personally, I actually had watched a video with her on bad ABA and good ABA. And this was by Dr. Carbone and he showed what he called a rehab teacher. He showed the first audio video of her and this kid was just running from her screaming, didn't want to even do anything with her. And she just kept pushing the demands on him. It was just horrible to watch. And I wasn't even a mother at that time. I'm thinking, oh my god, this poor kid. He just doesn't want to, this lady is just crazy. You know what I mean? She's just being so relentless with him. And then he, I guess, put her through some type of training about ABA and how it doesn't have to, you can use positive reinforcement to gain compliance. You can pair with the child. You can teach them in a way that's surrounded by love instead of by this scary demanding person looking for these specific outcomes for these kids. Sometimes it does kind of sound from an outside perspective. Educate. Obviously, I always tell my parents that I work with that you have to go with your gut. You have to really not just leave it to the professionals to work with your kids. You have to educate yourself on what is the best form of therapies out there. What are the needle movers that do the most for children? And I know that this is such a touchy topic with ABA. But the ABA that my daughter was exposed to was nothing but love. It really was. It was play and love and excited when the teachers came. And it was what book are they bringing? What toys? What candies am I going to try today? You know what I mean? It was always around a good positive reinforcement environment. And that's the only therapy that we've ever been exposed to. And even to this day is still what we use. So because ABA is so widely confirmed to be a very good form of making the needle move in a progressive way for children on the spectrum, it's still kind of the wild, wild west with that too, where not everybody is doing it in the most supportive way. So as a parent, you need to at least have a basic understanding of what is possible in the education that your child's exposed to. Yeah. I think that there has to be a lot of emphasis on being malleable and willing to try things and find out what works well and taking different parts of teaching methods or parenting methods and trying them out and see what produces the best results. Exactly. Never get hung up on one therapy or one idea either. Always be open to other options. Yeah. And that's all we've ever been exposed to. So when I've spoken to people, when you and I first talked and you said, you know, there's a lot of people that really hate ABA and I'm like, I've heard that too. And I just I feel so horrible. It's really not the experience that we've had. We've really liked it. I mean, yeah, they put demands on her, but not in a way that's like, you know, she hates these teachers. It's not like that at all. She really is a part of she's a part of the solutions to, you know, we're almost she's getting old enough to the point where we're going to ask her what she wants to work on, you know. Yeah. It's always been a loving, supportive relationship with her teachers. And if it's not that, then there's a problem. If something doesn't feel right, you know, sometimes we'll come across a teacher and that maybe I don't like the way that feels. And I'll feel it right. As a mother, I feel it right in my gut. Oh, my God, that doesn't feel right. And I go right in there. I'm like, I don't like the way this is going. And then we go in, we reshuffle the deck, we find a different way to approach it, you know. And just going back to the topic of my mom again, who obviously I absolutely adore, she's, she's brilliant. She's also a quite accomplished special needs teacher, like she every school that she's been to, she's also called Michelle, like weird coincidence. I was just looked at your name or not, or not. Hello. She always, she has, she has a word for the way that she parents and she teaches, she calls it holistic, which is a very broad term that can be used in all sorts of fashions and can sound a little bit pseudo sciencey and all that kind of stuff. But it's basically just compiling what works best together. Yes. Something that something that can help the kids and make sure that they have a nice time at school and that they're not traumatized by things there. They're getting all the needs met that maybe kids who are autistic don't need, you know, sort of like around the sensory things and making sure that they take that into account so they can help with their concentration and their experience at school. There's a lot of aspects to sort of finding those middle grounds that work. And that's the thing that we've got to drive home. They actually call it natural environment teaching in ABA. So that's a good thing for a parent who's interested in looking at it. It's called natural environment teaching. It's basically a method of ABA therapy that's done in a natural environment in a real life setting. And it's not like it doesn't feel clinical. It doesn't feel forced. That's why I think it's been so successful for us because the majority of her ABA has always been in our home or out in the community. If we go to the park together and we're trying to initiate play, skills or whatever, you know what I mean? It's always felt very natural with this extra person. I think a lot of the problems come in when we sort of analyze things as on paper, you know, when we don't really look at how the words, the information isn't interpreted and how each specific teacher can be using those sort of different styles. I think, you know, just starting up in the autistic community, you know, I sort of jumped onto that bandwagon of, oh, this is horrible. We should completely avoid this way. This is horrible. Let's push this to the side. No, I'm not talking to anybody who has any sort of opinion on that, that very sort of immediately judging kind of mindset to those types of things. But then as of, you know, gone into different schools and seen the sort of the environments and those things in practice, I can see where it works and with who it works and with who it doesn't. You know, I'm doing similar sort of practices, but it's never cruel. I think that's the main thing. It's always done with love, love first. That's how I really feel about it, like a relationship or friendship. So what advice can you give to parents worrying about getting their children diagnosed, actually getting them diagnosed before all of the sort of stages of grief, as you say? So I guess if you're not sure, if you feel like something's wrong to, you know, and this is hard because I kind of like was in denial with this myself. I remember thinking, oh, she's just beating to her own drum. You know, nothing's wrong. She's just going at her own pace. You know, once you get past that part and you really can kind of say, you know, when I'm starting to like tell myself trying to convince myself something's not wrong here, just get your child tested in the States up until the age of three, you can get them tested through the early intervention program. It's free. You contact your local Miss Pally, local county, and you can set that up, and they'll come in when we went through this with my daughter. I didn't even hesitate with my son and the guy evaluated three times by early intervention, just to make sure. Listen, guys, just to make sure, you know, even if you're like, you're not even sure, like, oh, I don't want to call them. It's not like that. He's just, you know, it's not that it's just this and that don't even hesitate. There was nothing wrong. But I had it. I was just the statistics say that if you have a child on the spectrum, you're likely to have another child that will have some special needs as well. So I didn't even hesitate. So I was like 12 months, 18 months, and two years old, he got evaluated at your early intervention until I could just feel confident 100% that we were not in need of additional support. So I don't hesitate. You're not putting anybody out. This is your job as a parent. And this is out of your realm of expertise. You know what I mean? We're not talking about changing diapers or feeding solids. We're talking about something that we wouldn't be 100% sure on without professional support anyway. So definitely any hesitations, get them checked out. If you have just been diagnosed and you're just kind of going through a whirlwind of emotions, that's why I've created our community. I actually have a Facebook group. It's free to join. It's called Champions for Our Children. I find one of the first things that you can do after diagnosis is to find community. I think it's important to find other parents that are going through this, but also parents that are looking to support their children in the most healthiest ways possible. So one of the first things I would say is find community. Another thing I would say is to try and find somebody, even if it's not me, somebody like me that can kind of help you to get through these emotions as best as possible so that you can start to take action in a way that'll support development and growth in your child. Seek out community, seek out professional support, and do as much research as you can and follow people like us, you and me. Here's a Thomas here who's living a great life as an adult with this and learned that the spectrum literally is a spectrum. You know one child with autism, you literally know one child with autism. Everybody has different ranges and capabilities and just community, support for yourself and your child and education for you. And then I think those are my top three advice I can give. Well, just to play a little bit of devil's advocate, I think one of the... It's not my opinion. I definitely agree with you. I think diagnosis is the way to go. But what would you say to parents who are worrying about their child having that label, they're worrying that having autism on their medical records is going to affect them or affect the way that they view themselves and how would you sort of go about giving them advice? So I definitely know how this feels because like I said, I was thinking this was a prison sentence when we were first going through it. So I was just trying to get out of the club. I was like, I'm in this club. I'm just going to do my time. I'm going to stay out of trouble and we're getting out of this club. I want to say that I used autism, the diagnosis as a tool to help my child period. That's all it meant today. So I understand that there's this whole stigma and belief behind that, but for me, I never looked at it like anything other than a label that is going to provide my child the best therapies possible to be the happiest she can be. So what I always try and tell parents that kind of struggle with this, if I'm looking at an IEP, because sometimes you'll look at like, you'll look at, you know, psychologist evaluation or you'll look at an IEP here in the States, that's your the individual education plan that they have for children with special needs. And sometimes it'll say some things in there that sting like maybe that, you know, the child flaps or I don't know is disruptive in class. And these are some of the goals we're going to work on. And sometimes that's kind of like a slap in the face reality check that we're in this situation. I don't look at it like it's my kid. I literally look at it like I'm a doctor reading a chart. So I say, okay, this is what's going on. These are the goals. I'm not putting any label to this, any whatever. Autism for me equals my ticket to services plan is simple. And that's why I tell that all parents, even ones that are on the fence, don't look at this as like some type of setback for life and attach all of these like expectations or all these things you think are going to happen because they have this just look at this as a actually as a pathway to a solution in the sense of being able to understand and support your child better than you've ever been able to before. So that's how I kind of look at it. I don't even look at it as like anything life. I just say this is a light label to get me what I need to help my daughter be the happiest. I completely agree. And I think a lot of the things that we attribute to labels is based on how you would as a parent view that label. If you take on board that maybe they're not going to be sociable, then you may sort of pull them out or you make me stop them doing things that are going to cause them stress or new things that you don't think they'll be able to handle. So being able to push them slowly in the right direction in a very caring way is the way forward. But the label is meaningless unless you give it meaning. It's meaningless. That's right. That's a good way to say it. You say it better than I do, Thomas. It's meaningless unless you give it meaning. Yes. I like that. Positive meaning. Yes, good. Getting the right support. That's it. Getting support. Exactly. Being able to communicate with your child like you've never been able to before. Now you're going to understand their language better. I've been standard standard perfectly. She still does stuff that's like bewildering to me. But whatever, we're rolling with it. Cool. So I think you've already given me sort of free main things that you want people to take away. Like, did you want to sort of redo those or do you think those are a good thing to sort of take away? Like three takeaways from our conversation today? All of the conversation, yeah. The entirety of it. Yeah, I'm trying to think here. Number one is your job is to be a parent and that did not change diagnosis or not. I guess that's my first takeaway. Your job as a parent has not changed means more now than ever did. Two is, you know, a diagnosis is your ticket to services playing simple. And that's all it means. It means that the more that we've defined the supports the child needs, the better we can treat it. And if we're kind of tiptoeing around what really is going on here, then we're really hurting the child at the end of the day to save our own ego. And then three is we want to seek out the supports and therapies immediately. It's shown in studies that if we expose these children between, I think it was Dr. Lovast study in 1987, he did a study of I think two to four year olds that were given exposure to an intensive ABA therapy. Now I can't speak to what ABA therapy it was, but the ABA I'm talking about is what I would expose any child to, which is a loving natural environment teaching paired relationship with a wonderful practitioner of ABA. These children came out of that study with either indistinguishable or recovered signs of autism. Now I say recovered very lightly and loosely, because as we talk, there is no necessarily a recovery from it. But what I take from that is quality of life has been dramatically improved because the parents took action as quickly as possible. Those are my three that I guess we could take away from this. So we have the last question. And I usually ask this question to autistic people, but I suppose being a parent and having such a close connection with your child, do you have an idea of what autism means to you? What does it mean to me? I don't know. I've really never thought about this. It's a difficult question. Yeah. To our life, I guess it's definitely touched us in a very personal way because my child has autism. What does it mean to me? I'm not really even sure how to answer this. I guess it would have meant to us, personally, is that I have a child that learns and feels very differently than I do. But that doesn't have to define her and define our relationship. For me, it's like learning a new language, but there's still a relationship and rewards to be had between us. So I guess for us, autism is just maybe a slight road bump in our relationship, but not necessarily something that I would want her to feel that she has to define her life around, but something that you can live a happy life with. Thank you very much for that. There's no right or wrong answers to that. It's just what you feel about it. I think that question gives people a good idea of how different people think about autism. One of my friends called Adam, who I had on one of my previous podcasts, he's always defined himself as himself rather than autistic Adam. He's always sort of strived to differentiate himself from it and get good and excel in areas that autistic people shouldn't be able to. So he's sort of seen it as a challenge and something to overcome. And then on the other side of things, you've got people who think about it as a very integral part of themselves, but they love that part of themselves. It's not a bad thing. They sort of learn about it and they work on things and try and craft a life for themselves out of their experiences and what works for them. I think there's a lot of different ways of thinking about it. And who am I to say that any of them are wrong? Everyone's got their own emotions and experiences behind them. It's just about bringing everyone together and having a chat. Yeah, no, I agree. I think I'd love her to have that evolution. There's still some things for her to learn not just as an autistic child, but as a child, period. And once we get past the... I guess even as an adult, you're learning too, but as my responsibilities come to a close, yeah, I'd want her to kind of take the reins and figure out what this means to her and whatever that is I'm going to support. That's a great ending message. I like that. So, Michelle, where can people find your work? Where can people find you on the big world of the Instagram? Sure. So my website is michelleb rogers.com. I am on Facebook as Michelle Rogers. I am also have a group on there. I'd love everybody to join if they wanted. It's called Champions for Our Children. And I am on Instagram as Michelle Brogers. Brogas. Yes. Oh, Brogers. So I didn't even say it right. Brogas, yeah. You got your own name. Yeah, there you go. And so, yeah, you could contact me through there. And like I said, we are launching a self-study course at the end of October. It's called Advocating Like a Boss. If you couldn't tell, I'm a little bit of a assertive personality. So a well-fitting title for our self-study course. It's like all of the intricacies of just getting a basic understanding of what you need to do to hit the ground running for your kids. And then I do offer one-on-one coaching if somebody wanted support specifically with what they're working through. And then come the new year, I think we're going to be launching the Champions for Our Children masterclass, which is going to be so exciting and awesome for me. We're going to do group coaching. We're all going to be in this together and we'll work on our individual goals in a community format, which I think will be fabulous. So brilliant. Thank you very much for those. So if you enjoy this episode and you want to listen to some more, you want to listen to some more episodes, you can find the 40-odd podcast on YouTube, Spotify and Apple podcasts. Very easy to find. All you got to do is search it free, available to everybody. And if you want to stay up to date with my day today, you can always follow me on my Instagram, Twitter and Facebook under Asperger's growth. Again, very easy to find. That's the last thing. YouTube channel, of course, it's a little bit lagging behind in terms of videos coming out. As I said, I am back at work now. So the amount of time that I have in the day is very limited. And I want to try and get these podcasts out as much as I can. And if you do have a story, I am currently in the process of recording new podcasts for editing and putting out. So if you want to get in contact with me on my social medias or Asperger's growth at GMA.com, you are very welcome to. Thank you very much, Michelle, for coming on. I really appreciate it. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I've had a good time chatting about this. Yes, me too. I was a little bit nervous about talking around the parenting styles and stuff. But I feel like we've had a good conversation about it. Oh, excellent. Excellent. I like talking to you too. I'm excited to continue our conversations. Yeah, over on your... What's it? I was going to do it on YouTube. So we'll have to see if you're game for that. I was going to just do it on YouTube. So like a live stream. We could either do a live stream or we could do it and just kind of like do it on Zoom and upload it, whatever tickles your fancy. Cool. But yeah, go over and check Michelle's stuff out. Yeah, let us know what you think of this episode. And I hope you have a good day. Whether it's the night time, have a good sleep. Whether it's the afternoon, have a good day. And whether it's the morning, get your coffee in. Make sure that you're up and ready to take life on. I was going to say grab it by the balls, but that's a little bit unprofessional. Take it on like a boss. I like that. There you go. Advocate like a boss. Yes, there you go. See you later, folks. Okay, bye-bye. Bye.