Grandparents Raising Grandchildren- Reclaiming the Neurodiverse Household

Introduction to the podcast series

SPEAKER_00 0:45

I have never felt before ever. Never mind every day. This is exceeding my capacity. I actually can't do this. And then what? Then I'm gonna do it. Today we're tearing down the clinical, pathologized walls of special education and the medical system to build a house of radical acceptance. If you have ever sat in your car with screaming children, feeling your own sensory overload clawing at your throat, Dr. Jennifer Brunton is here to tell you your limits are real. Your unique wiring is valid, and you are not failing the mission. Welcome to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, Nurturing Through Adversity. In this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren. As we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support, I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care. We'll discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you. Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored. Welcome back to the boardroom, everyone. I want to take a collective deep breath with you today. Lately, I've been thinking about how easy it is to fall into the trap of trying to correct, control, and force compliance out of the families when the chaos gets too loud. We treat our households like a crisis to be managed rather than an ecosystem of human beings processing the world through completely different lenses. Today's guest blew me away with her vulnerability. Dr. Jennifer Brunton is a Columbia-educated PhD, an author, a professor of counseling, and an autistic mother and grandmother who is the primary caregiver for two brilliant, intense, neurodivergent toddlers. She lives the beautifully complex reality of a household where one person's sensory regulation directly triggers another's migraine. That conversation reframed how I look at my own family's boundaries. And it reminded me that the ultimate act of leadership isn't masking our exhaustion. It's having the bravery to admit when we're operating past our capacity. And then building the scaffold to survive anyway. Here's my conversation with Dr. Jennifer Brunton. Jennifer, it's so nice to have you on the show. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your time. I know that you're a very busy person being the autistic parent of an autistic son and a grandmother and primary caregiver for two of your neurodivergent granddaughters, both two and three years old. But I know that's what fuels you. So I'm so honored to have your time today and for you to share with us a little bit more about neurodivergency and autism, especially. You've worked with corporations and done five-brain leadership, which I can't wait to learn more about. But you also live that daily reality of living in a neurodiverse household. Help us understand how we move from uh a traditional model of compliance and correction to the model of being neuroaffirming leaders in our own families and in the world that actually respects each of our children's unique wiring.

Parenting a child with attachment disorder

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Well, it's funny when I when I think about that. She would have like seven to ten tantrums a day. We found a wonderful therapist who helped us learn what worked with children who were dysregulated. And what it turned out to be was this kind of strange combination of like really solid boundaries and really sort of clear expectations, but also like complete unilateral acceptance. So it was like a combination that was very different from how most people were parenting, you know. So, like in my household, both of my kids were high needs. So my when my daughter came home, my son was almost five and she was almost one. And um, she had an attachment disorder. He hadn't been diagnosed yet, but he is autistic. And so both of my kids were high needs, and I raised them largely on my own, and then later with my second husband, and in a way that held really, really strict, consistent structures and rules. And that helped my daughter feel safe. So when we talk about moving away from like compliance, control, correction, we need we can't just be completely amorphous and just let it all go. Like there needs to be something. So there's a way to be very gentle, but also have firm boundaries. So, like, for example, I expect at the dinner table for people to be kind and respectful to each other. Period. Right. I you may have something that you can't eat because you have sensory issues, or you may need to fidget, or you may need, you know, my daughter um needed opportunities for autonomy within that structure. So she might have needed to assert herself. So we but we still have to keep like we had to kind of reshape that compliance correction control thing into like a family scaffolding that uplifts each person and accepts each person while having these just boundaries. So again, this is like quite different from how the average person was parenting at the time. And and quite and quite isolating because I was doing this in Vermont and everyone was super,

Parenting a child with attachment disorder

SPEAKER_01 7:50

super groomed here. I am again with these high needs, neurodivergent children. And so I have to say, just so you know, that one of the things that has saved me, like literally saved me, is your podcast. I've been listening to it whenever I can. I had to go bring my daughter home from college. And we've had the kids all the time recently because their mother had another baby and is unhoused. And I had to bring them home, but bring my daughter home from college, so I had to somehow get their mother to have them for a couple days. So I had to like find her housing and all these other kinds of things. But then the girls got sick and they were in the pediatric ER. And um I couldn't bring the girls to her in time to do the trip that I had planned to go get my daughter, who, you know, has really given up a lot. You know what I mean? Like like she teen, sixteen, seventeen, when this all started happening, and she was really psyched to be like the baby of the family and finally get spoiled because my my son was in had been in was in college, he had a full National Science Foundation scholarship to college, and like it was gonna be her time. And then like he dropped out, he brought his girlfriend home, they started having babies. Like, she has not had what she was expecting at all. So we had this whole trip planned, and um, you know, we were gonna go to museums and we were gonna do all this great stuff, and it ended up just being like one night, but back to the podcast, it really helped me because on the way to Philadelphia, I listened to this podcast and I I got such solidarity from the other grandparents, you know, because I can't talk to my friends, you know, my friends do not get it. Yes, you know, that my daily life is like almost daily I feel, and this is something I've never felt before, and it may be something that you or your listeners relate to. I have never felt before ever, never mind every day. This is exceeding my capacity. I actually can't do this, you know, and then like, but then what? Like then I'm I'm gonna do it. But like I feel like my I have never felt that before. Like when I had my children, it was like, okay, this is a lot. You know, I'm a single mom, but I got this, I'll figure it out. Now I'm like, I I can't, I can't do this. You know, like I wake up first thing in the morning, I'm like, uh oh, you know, and then I see their little faces, and somehow you make it through the day, but whoo! So your podcast, total lifesaver.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Thank you. I think, Jennifer, I think everyone that is listening goes through that. Maybe some days it's every day, and it does get easier. It does get easier, but it never ends. That feeling comes and because we're always meeting these walls, we've never had to go through before, admitting that to ourselves and understanding that that's okay and that's where we are, and that we're imperfectly imperfect human beings doing the best we can is a really big part of acceptance that we all we all need and go through. So brave of you to admit that.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Well, and it's also daunting because like the first time around, we're kind of young and foolish. Like we don't think like there everything is open to us. And then now you're like, I'm gonna be raising high needs children for the rest of my life. Yeah, far as I can tell. Like, if I'm lucky, maybe I'll have a couple years at the end in my 80s where I'm gonna be free, you know. Like I'm seeing my parents in their 80s.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

It's made me a better listener. I never really was a very good listener. Learning how we process individually is such an important part of acknowledgement for other people when we can take the time to say, how do you see this? How do you perceive things? What do you feel? I'm letting go of a lot of assumptions that I had, and I'm thankful for that. I think I'm a better human being because I can do that, don't

Challenging personal growth journey

SPEAKER_00 11:32

you? I think it's humbling.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

There's a if this has definitely made me, I consider myself like a very spiritual person and a person of faith. This has at times made me question that, but at other times I feel like the work that we are doing is so deeply meaningful. And I do feel like I'm I'm maybe growing inside in ways that I couldn't have imagined otherwise. One time you said, and I maybe I think it was on one of your podcasts, you said, this has helped me learn to love myself. And that's another thing is that like when you are exceeding your capacity, when things are this challenging day in and day out, when you are letting go of the dreams that you held for a long time. I mean, a lot of us work really hard for a really long time, and we think there's gonna be this time when we're gonna be on the turquoise beach. And now we're like lucky if we go down to the local pond, you know, that's full of kids tea. You know, you know, it's it's a big, big shift. And I think it is. I think if we could keep that perspective of um of remembering the meaning of what we're doing and and how we're growing. I think that we come back to the piece about and this relates to speaking about this in the context of neurodiversity as well. It comes back to how do we remember that in those moments when there's two kids screaming in the backseat, you know?

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Yes, yes. There's a wonderful episode, I don't know if you've listened it to, and it's Dr. Emerson Lindsay Emerson.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yeah, I think I have listened to that one. Though those five C's? Yes. And I wrote them down. I wrote them down. Oh, I am your devoted listener. Yes, I wrote them down and I have them in a bookmark, and when I go to bed, if I ever have like 10 minutes to read, I look at the bookmark and I remember. And there was another one that she it's like consistency, check-in, etc. etc. And then there was another one that was up from maybe from a different podcast that was connecting before correcting. So I've got seven C's.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

So what I've gotten better at doing is when I start feeling that like angry, frustrated, I've met my wall feeling, and the kids are yelling in the backseat or fighting or arguing. And believe me, I fall short of this all the time. But I'm remembering more quickly with time to go, why is this getting to me? What do I do? Is this because I'm tired? Is this because things are too loud and I don't handle loudness really well as I get older?

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Can I say, you know, guys, this is really starting to get to me because you're arguing, as much as I know that what you're talking about is really important to both of you, is not working well for me right now.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

And yeah, and that's right, that's very non-judgy. Like it's non-judgy.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

It's like like here's how I'm feeling. This isn't working for me. Yeah, and it's starting to get me upset. So could you take that in the other room? Or since we're in a car together, could you respect the fact that this is bothering me and let's just put this on a shelf till we get and then you guys can keep fighting if you want to.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

That's so good. And you know, that speaks to some of the things that we wanted to talk about also about neurodiversity, because in my household, we have a plethora of neurodivergence, right? So we have my son who is autistic and is um a sensory seeker. He's very low-key, he's very mellow, he's just sort of like laid back, and he might sit here and tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, right? And then there's me, I get a migraine from that, right? And then there's one of my granddaughters who's little Miss Echolalia, like literally does not stop going whoa, woah, woah, woah, woah, like that, things like that. And then there's my other granddaughter who's more like me, who's hyper, hypersensitive and is like, you know, accidentally touched some water and screaming. So we have to figure out how to regulate all those different things. What do you do? Um, well, we just try to like, I have, you know, I'll take the girls and Ernie will go on a bird watching walk, and then I will, you know, put headphones on one of the girls. Like we do, we do like micro adjustments because we live, and this is something because because I do so much talking about neurodiversity and autism, this is something that we've been grappling with as a household, and I talk to audiences a lot about is that different kinds of neurodivergence having

Managing Family Emotions

SPEAKER_01 15:51

different needs, it doesn't have to be a conflict, right? You can find ways to adjust to it. You know, you can find ways to give each person what they need. But again, in those moments where, like, you know, two or three out of four of the neurodivergent members of our household are about to melt down, it's good to have tools, right? So we have different kinds of deep breathing, we have headphones, we have go on a walk. We, you know, because my son is obsessed with birds. So if he starts to kind of melt down, which he can because his daughters are a lot. And there's resentment there also because their other parent is not really in their lives and doesn't carry what they should, and all of that. So he starts to get riled up about all of that. And if she had another memory, you know, all that. And then he goes, everybody needs their little space, and somehow on a good day, we manage to serve those very different needs. And and my son was the one who initially pointed part of that out, which was I get very, and it sounds like you do too, with the auditory stuff, with Ellie, my younger, oh, she will just say something again and again and again and again. And I'll be like, Ellie, please stop talking. You know, and my son says, Well, she's stimming, mom, like she needs to do that. And I'm like, You're right. Okay, well, we're all autistic here. So how do we serve the needs of all the different autistic people? And so it's it's a work in progress. But uh, but that is something that when you have these little tools, like you said, like, what do I need right now? You know, what does this baby need? What does this toddler need? My granddaughter, who is very, very, very sensitive like me, like she likes to squeeze things. So I'll set her up on the couch with we have a huggable comfort chicken that someone made for us. She'll have and it's named Win a Fred, but she calls it win a friend. So she'll have win a friend and you know, and then the other one could go in the kitchen and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, keep talking and you know, have a squishy.

Discussing acceptance in advocacy

SPEAKER_01 17:43

And we I don't know. I think, okay, if I were to point to one facet of this, because one of the things from our books is we talk to hundreds of pe autistic people for each book to come up with the the principles and answers and and ideas that we come up with in them. And one of them is um we have basic principles for advocacy, and the number one principle, which sounds really simple, but isn't always lived, is acceptance. So we just accept that all of our needs are valid. We we understand that some of our needs are conflicting. If I had my way, I would be alone uh 23 hours a day. And I'm in a 900 square foot house with six people. None of whom, none of them is an introvert. None of them, one of them is very sensory sensitive like me, but they're all extroverts, they're all loud, they're all loving, good people. But, you know, how do we meet these different needs? Of course, my needs tend to be the last ones that get met, but acceptance is the number one thing. And it looks like that. It looks like, okay, we need different solutions.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

So you've made the identity shift. Yeah. Moving from rather not having that pathology lens of what's wrong with my child, what's wrong with you? It's a to the neurodiversity diversity lens of how are all these different people processing the world?

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Huge, huge, huge part of my work. Um, I have written many, many blog posts about this, written about it a lot in my books. I've given speeches on it, like pathologization, moving away from medicalization and pathologization, pathologization and diseasification of neurodiversity toward a neurotype. Actually, my most recent blog post, which is my second most read blog post ever, is I rewrote the DSM definition, a diagnosis criteria for autism. And I rewrote it with language that includes the aspects of autism that it was pointing to, but uses language that's completely inclusive and affirming. And it can still be used for diagnosis, but it takes words that are like disorder and uses a different word, like difference, or uses um, you know, obsession and changes it to focus, things like that.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

And I want you to share, since we're talking about it, about both your actually autistic guides and where listeners can find more information. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Okay, so I have a blog, and that was where this sort of all originally came from, where I found my co-author and all of that. It's called Full Spectrum Mama. It's full spectrummama.blogspot.com. And that really explores a lot of different aspects of raising extraordinary children. So I it's not, it is largely about neurodivergence, particularly autism and sensory processing differences. I was in a what's called a blog hop about sensory processing differences for a really long time. So I would write monthly or weekly posts about sensory processing, but it's also about autism, but it's also talks about adoption, it talks about uh attachment disorders. So I went through that very seriously with my daughter, who was adopted from China, and then I also am revisiting that with my grandchildren because their uh mother isn't much in their life. Um, so that's the blog, and then I have a a neuroscience leadership book out called Five Brain Leadership, and that you can just Google it and you can get it on Amazon or um the publisher.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

And is that one more for um younger children or older?

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Five brain leadership is holistic vision of the way you can use all the different parts of your brain in your work and in your life. And that but the the two actually autistic guides that I have out right now, and we're working on a third one. But the first one is called the actual actually autistic guide to advocacy, and that's the one that I would recommend for grandparents raising younger grandchildren, um, people in general who it can't, it works for self-advocates as well. I mean, I myself am autistic, so I'm not going to write something that's not affirming. It's it's very welcoming. It talks a lot about the principles of actually autistic, like affirming advocacy, main principles being, like I said, acceptance, looking at the way we use language, super, super important to use language in affirming ways, understanding that everybody makes mistakes. Another piece of that advocacy principles thing is understanding that there, that neurodiversity expresses itself in a lot of different ways. We have this image that who's autistic is like rain man, or it's like young male people who repeat things or are savants. And there are just there are so many different ways that autism is expressed and that neurodivergence is expressed, and so many different overlaps. And, you know, people sometimes assume that people who are autistic are cognitively disabled, which that can happen, but it's not related with autism at all. So there's a lot of different clarification in there about different ways that we can advocate that are healthy and affirming and welcoming and inclusive. And then the second actually autistic guide is for building independence. It's called the actually autistic guide to building independence. And that's for a little like tweens, even starting to think about that. Families with tweens, tweens themselves, people who work with them. That would be for grandparents raising grandchildren who are a little older. And also on the blog, I have a word search function. So you can look up things that you're interested in. I wrote, I've written a ton about advocacy. Um, I've written a lot about like IEPs and things like that, you know. And one of the things to you don't have to brace yourself for this unless you don't like humor, but my blog is kind of funny because boy, this parenting thing is no joke, but it's sometimes the funniest things happen. Like I'm this person, like I have my Columbia University PhD and everything, and it was all the advocacy stuff was so terrifying for me. And so I would go into these meetings and I would try to like psych myself up and be like, okay, I have a doctorate and I'm this and that, and I know a lot. But but it's always like there's like seven other people in there. It's really intimidating. So I would just remember this one time I went in and I thought I had really done this really great job. And I walked out in my entire, I was like wearing a suit. That's how serious I was. Like I had a suit blazer on, right? Covered in cat hair, just covered, covered in cat hair. It's always like that. You're trying to do this, but it's something like that is always happening. So in my blog, it's funny. My other, my most popular post ever is a post about um, it's called school testing. Many of you who are listening, and I know Laura, you understand this. You go into these meetings and there's

Discussing IEPs and School Testing

SPEAKER_01 24:49

page upon page. IEPs by nature are designed to point to your child's weaknesses. And they're also designed boilerplate, right? So they're gonna come in there and be like, okay, your child is, you know, let's say autistic. Well, then they need this, this, this, and this. And it's not necessarily true, right? So, but there's all this language that's like carefully saying all this really brutal stuff. So I wrote a post called school testing that basically takes all these things that we love about our kids and talks about that. And I don't know, people really love that post. So those are the main things. And then the actually autistic guides are out from Hashette um Jessica Kingsley Publishing. So they're on, they're everywhere, Barnes and Noble, you know, Amazon, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

I'll make sure to provide all the links to all that information in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

And one other thing about those is that for people who don't have a lot of disposable income, maybe because they're raising grandchildren unexpectedly, um, we have free discussion guides on the publisher's website. So those discussion guides, we spent almost as much work on them as on the books. So you've got a synopsis of every chapter, and then you've got questions for discussion, all kinds of stuff. So there's a ton of resources that you can even just get for free. So you go on the publishing website, go to the page of the books, and it says additional resources, and you can click on that and download, you know, 30, 40 page free discussion guides if the if purchasing the book is a stretch.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

And I will put whichever ones we can in our resource library. Great. Is there anything else you would like to share with listeners before I ask you the three questions that I ask all of my interviewees?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Gosh, I mean, I love your podcast. I love hearing from the experts. One of the things I just really, really love is hearing other grandparents, you know, just hearing their experience. And so I hope that people listening to this will will feel seen and will feel, you know, empowered if possible. I've had these moments where I just felt like I couldn't. And I would think of some little thing that I heard on your podcast because it's really life-changing to know there's other people out there like this. I'll tell you a story. So, my best friend in the world since I was four, has a fully fledged son, you know, went to college, now he's out on his career, etc. She um remarried to a pilot and retired at 50. And now she spends all of her time traveling. And I went out on the deck the other day because I was like, I can't do this. And I FaceTimed her and I was like, is this my life? I was like, Am I ever gonna not look haggard? Am I ever gonna travel again? Am I ever gonna do anything? She's like, No. She's like, you took on these kids. That was your decision. I mean, she's my best friend, but she's getting saucy, right? And she's like, it was your decision. The next 20 years of your life are gonna be like this, and that's just the way it is. And I was just like, thank you. I'm gonna go jump off this deck, you know.

Advocacy and community building

SPEAKER_01 27:37

So, so then at that, it but it's not like that when you have community, when you have the kind of community that you're building. And if you keep working with the advocacy stuff at the federal level, which I would be very happy to get involved in, my part of my work is that I am an editor of a um very large circulation political action checklist. And this is, as you said, a it's a bipartisan issue. You know, this isn't a partisan thing. This we we need some justice for grandparents and for the sake of the children as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah. Well, the show is going to move more towards addressing these issues in the fall. And I'm excited to share more with you and love to have you back on the show.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Love it. Love it totally.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Well, then I will ask you a systematic question, a taboo question, and a policy question. You've navigated some of the highest levels of academia and publishing. Why do you think that our current educational and legal system struggles so deeply to accommodate unique thinkers? And what do you think is the first step that a kinship caregiver can take to demand a neuro-affirming environment in their schools?

SPEAKER_01 28:44

That's a really big one. That to me is a question of like time and budget. I feel like they're dealing with so many different people and the system is so overburdened that people who even might be very well-meaning don't have the time to update their language, don't have the time to research and learn more about each kind of difference that they might be dealing with. So I think that people are just overwhelmed and overworked. I just um I just gave a keynote at the Massachusetts Special Education Summit in April, which was hilarious because I went literally from being with two lunatic hooligan toddlers to being up there in a suit and being the expert. But one of the things that I said was just asking people to see the people in front of them as humans. And I was like, I know how over that vastly oversimplifying because it was an hour-long keynote. But you know, I know how overwhelmed, overworked, overburdened you are. But if you could take one breath and realize that that person in front of you is a human being, aside from their diagnosis, aside from their labels, I think there's just there are so many conflicts. I'm sure every one of those people would love to be like a one-on-one with like one kid and really get to know them and really I'll say more about this in the last in the other question where you talk about big structural changes. But I think that just it takes time and opportunity. You have to create an opportunity to see another person as a human. And I think that that in at least in special ed, people don't have make that space. And maybe they don't feel like they can. And what I was trying to say in this conference and in general is like one breath, one breath. Like I'm looking at you through this Zoom and I'm taking one breath. And I'm gonna see that you're a human and that you, you know, have people you love and you have indigestion like me, and you're wondering how you're gonna pay that bill. We're human, right? But but I think that these systems don't give space for that, and you have to make it. In terms of kinship care itself and what a grandparent can do. I think that there's no substitution for education. Educating yourself about what your child's rights are, educating yourself about what their differences are, because we're not just looking to get more services, we're looking for more inclusion, we're looking for a more welcoming, affirming environment. Maybe you can get more services because of your rights, but if you have some understanding, then we're gonna have, and maybe

The importance of understanding rights

SPEAKER_01 30:59

you can't get more services because special education is being just slaughtered right now. But, you know, I think that understanding piece is really, really vital. And I think that if if the grandparents are coming into the room with that knowledge, but also that love piece where they're they're looking to connect and to be seen and for their child to be seen, I think that's that's what I would say, just for the um sort of systemic issue is that everybody, if just each person listening to this or each person that you come in contact with can take that one extra breath, make that one little extra effort to move away from seeing everything as a box to be checked off, you know? Like, I mean, I you've seen IEPs. By the time my son graduated from high school, his IEP was this thick. And I would just go into the meetings and be like, here are the three things you actually need to know. And here's what he has to say, you know, because it's it's just a real bureaucratic system that it does not have the resources that it needs to sustain the even its own bureaucracy.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Yeah. Systems change slowly, but we can teach our children how to advocate for themselves. Yeah, yeah. The most effective way of changing the systems is teaching them.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Yeah. And that comes back to something you were saying earlier, which is the listening piece, right? Like we we may also want to go in there and be really fierce, but are we doing what really, really works for them and what they really want? I mean, uh there are kids at ages or with, you know, in in particular moods that don't really know what they want, but fundamentally are we respecting the integrity of that child.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Right. You know? Are we saying to them, are you listening to me? Yeah. You know, uh when when we talk to other people and we realize they're not listening, saying, Are you really listening to what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

And acknowledging that that that's something that we don't do. Well, the tab the taboo question I have for you is I think is a quiet stigma around the autistic parent or the autistic grandparent. And we often talk about autism parents as martyrs, but rarely as neurodivergent leaders themselves. So, how do we reclaim the dignity of the neurodivergent caregiver who's raising a neurodivergent child? How do you do that?

SPEAKER_01 33:20

As an autistic person, and again, diagnosed in my late 30s, self-diagnosed in my 20s, but autistic since birth, I've always, because I miss social cues and I don't this is stuff what I'm saying, I didn't even know this for a very long time. So I'm telling you with self-awareness that comes from learning about autism for the last 20, 30 years. I miss cues. I don't tend to naturally respect or understand hierarchy. I say uncomfortable truths. This is very classic autistic person stuff. But I always, even before I knew any of that about myself, I always had to do better in order to just be accepted. You know, so like in graduate school, I was a fellow and I was the top student in many of my classes, including statistics, which nobody else did well in. I had to do that, but I there were so many things I wasn't getting. And that has kind of played out as well into parenthood. I do have a lot of close friends. I had a really rough family growing up. Many autistic, assigned female at birth, autistic people will make friendship into a special interest. And it was definitely friendship was a special interest for me. And I have a lot of close friends that I've had throughout my lifetime, but it started going south when my life took this very different pathway. So, first, I'm a single mom with a disabled kid and a child with an attachment disorder. That's not happening for most of my friends. And and, you know, and and I did make my best friend, who is now my absolute best friend in the world, because she also had an autistic kid,

Meeting through shared challenges

SPEAKER_01 34:43

and we called each other our meeting friends because we would just call each other before meetings, like IEP meetings or therapy meetings or whatever. We'd be like, What should I do? What should I do? Help! And she's a civil rights lawyer, so she was good to have, you know, in my camp. You know, when you start to be divergent, first of all, you're neurodivergent, right? Then you start, your life starts to be so divergent from the people, you know. I went to Brynmarr, I went to Columbia. I I shouldn't be single mom with like two high needs kids and on getting EBT. That wasn't supposed to happen. And nobody in my circle is in that situation at all.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Or admit they they are, because when we don't acknowledge the needs, these are the children that get lost. Yeah. A lot of people don't talk about it. I think there's a lot more neurodivergency than we acknowledge.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

There there may be, but like I'm talking about like my closest friends, like companies, they're successful lawyers. They usually have most of them have very stable, good marriages with stable people. You know, I married a Bon Vivant chef in my second time around, you know, whatever. Like it just my life starts to go in a different direction than most of my friends. And I do start meeting people who are in different worlds and they get it. They get it, right? So we respect each other, right? But we're talking about how when my son got bullied and I would eventually

Dealing with bullying and respect

SPEAKER_01 35:58

talk to some of the parents. So he was younger, some of those parents bullied me, right? And then some of them, the ones who were like, I my kids shouldn't do that and like talk to their kid and everything else. Like it's it's very, I guess my point is nobody's gonna give you the respect, right? So you're gonna go out there and you're kind of weird. Maybe you tell people you're autistic, maybe you don't, right? But you're already weird. And then you have these weird kids that you know there's something wrong with them. And how do you counter all of that? The way I've countered it is by like healing, educating myself, becoming a I mean, I don't recommend this for everyone, and I I really do not enjoy public speaking, but like I have found my areas to fight for justice, not just for myself, for um neurodivergent people in general, but just people, just all different kinds of people. We're all interdependent. That's one of the main things that I've been talking a lot about lately is like you think that because some people need certain kinds of help, that there's something wrong with them. But everybody gets help all the time. We have roads, we have banks, we have teachers. Every kind of help helps us all together become better.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Right. You know, I tell my granddaughter all the time there are all different kinds of families.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

They do have that, like even Ren, who's three, and when her mother left, she was two. She would say to me, I want dada and mama to be together. Yeah, they should be together. Other people have dada and mama together. We do. We have all of these. That's what they see in the cartoons. Yeah. We have all these models that don't serve our families. And we need to, you know, you're doing it in your way, I'm doing it in my way. If you have that privilege or that opportunity to shift that a little bit in a public way, but even just in your own private home, you know, say they're all families are different. Families look like this, families look like that, families are people who love each other, you know?

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

I almost think I need to have a sign outside my house that says something to that effect. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Thank you. Well, the policy question I have for you is that if you were COO of the country, what is the first strategic adjustment you would mandate in public spaces, schools, libraries, courtrooms to ensure that a universal design is the standard rather than an exception for families like ours?

SPEAKER_01 38:19

So do you want like the fantasy answer or like a more realistic answer?

SPEAKER_00 38:24

I want to hear the fantasy answer first, and then tell me the realistic one.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

My fantasy answer is really such a dream for me. I wish we could have, um, and there are, and we actually in the political work that I do, we have we promote some organizations that do this. So I think there's one called eating dinner together. Like I have this fantasy that, and I don't, I don't actually think it's a fantasy. I live in a neighborhood that's kind of that's very mixed. So I live in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is one of the most progressive, diverse, weird, artistic, academic communities in the world. It's known for that. But we also have tons of people who have been here a long time who, you know, the people directly across from me are Republican, had big Trump signs, you know, and then my yard is Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ flags and all of that. And then I have like lots of lesbian neighbors, I have lots of people from other countries, I have Tibetan refugees. But my point is we all get along because we see each other every day. And, you know, I bring

Promoting community and connection

SPEAKER_01 39:24

them flowers from my garden and they bring me extra apple crisp. And I really, really, and maybe I'm naive, and especially with some of the life experiences I've had now, I'm thinking I if we're trying to promote universal design, for example, if people sit down together and we even like create a space that is created with universal design and then have people sit together and have dinner and you understand that I have a grandma, you have a grandma, you have a dog, I love my dog, you know, like I like music, you know, I I have this bunion. If people just talk to each other, that would help so much. I know it's such a vapid answer, but I really, really, really mean it in a very heartfelt way. I have not seen I'm hearing you people sit down together and share a meal without being able to find some common ground. And I do think that that's what we've gotten so far away from in this country. And I think acceptance. Yeah, acceptance and and just the other piece of that, and I guess I'm getting back to the reality piece of it. With our current climate being so chaotic and so divided, it's really it can be kind of hard to know where to start. And the ADA is being left away at really, really badly. So a lot of the special education stuff is being slashed, um enforcement's being reduced, um, when I think it should be being strengthened. But I think that one of the really key things about universal design and I and it is empirically, actually, objectively true, is that universal design serves everybody. It serves everybody better. Things like extra time on tests, different ways to access things, more clear language, all of those things serve everybody. I think that my first strategic step would be some kind of very proactive practical education to that end. Not even instituting some aspect of universal design for in particular, but finding really striking ways to show the public that universal design is for everyone, literally, not just for you have a specific example. Well, I'm thinking of I could talk about libraries. So I give a lot of talks in libraries. Libraries are um a wonderful refuge for so many people. And the libraries that I talk to, what they're all trying to do is serve these very varied populations. So you get a lot of neurodivergent kids who are a little lonely. You get a lot of unhoused people who have nowhere to go. So they're doing these different things, right? They're like, they will have, um, if they can, you know, some of them are doing it with a very minimal budget. And I do some consulting around that as well. And I'll be like, okay, so why don't you take this little piece

Creating sensory inclusive library spaces

SPEAKER_01 42:01

of wallpaper and put it here? It's not like everybody has to do a ton of money to do this, but libraries are doing things like trying to have a space that's sensory uh inclusive. Sensory inclusive, but that means a couple different things, right? So they might have a quiet space and they might have a sensory room that has um, you know, squishies and sound makers and and um you know tinkling things and all like all different kinds of things, it also has headphones, right? So so universal design, it's kind of like going back to what we were talking about at the beginning with that idea of we have different needs, but if we have an understanding that all of our needs can be honored somehow, and it might be hard. It might be hard if you have one room, right? Right. But we're gonna figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

If our life is it's difficult, it's chaotic, it's not perfect, and we accept that about each other, and it's important.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

And we're showing up, we're showing up here and we're showing up there. Because I because I said this is a miracle. My husband picked up everybody and took them to the park. Thank you, husband. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Thanks for the men out there that are helping support us in what we do.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

It's been a pleasure, Jennifer. So much.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

Thank you so much. I hope we can stay in touch.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

We will. And I just want to say that I encourage all grandparents that are raising grandchildren to share their stories, just as Jennifer has, because it's so important that we share these commonalities, these griefs, these successes, and these joys back together.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

Thank you. Let's step into the reflection room. And take that one extra breath Dr. Brunton talked about. Ask yourself honestly today. Where are you forcing compliance on a child or on yourself when what's actually needed is an accommodation? When the world tells us our families are fractured or broken because they don't look like the traditional standard, it's incredibly easy to shoulder that silent stigma alone. But your unique wiring, your neurodivergence, and your lived reality are not pathologies to be fixed. They are your blueprint. I challenge you this week to identify one conflicting need in your house. Don't judge it. Don't try to correct it out of existence. Find the micro adjustment. Buy the headphones. Name the comfort chicken. Or step out onto the deck and call a friend who truly gets it. Your story and your survival are paving the way for the rest of us. I hope you'll join us next week for episode 128 as we welcome Dr. Jill Bryant to the show. Jill has spent years researching the deep complexities of counseling and the lived reality of kinship care as both a professor and a grandparent raising her grandchild. Her groundbreaking work focuses on the complete objective well-being of kinship caregivers. And it's exactly what it sounds like: a practical map for moving our families out of the initial trauma of unexpected custody and directly into a space of long-term stability and fierce advocacy. Jill is the developer of a critical 10-minute national survey to give our advocates the real-world data they

Empowering educational advocacy

SPEAKER_00 45:22

need to fight for the funding your family deserves right now. So our mission continues. And strong, still nurturing and still here. We are redrawing the blueprints of education, trading the clinical boxes of weaknesses for the truth of human dignity, and building sanctuaries out of 900 square feet of beautiful chaos. Keep nurturing, keep leading, and I'll see you in the next boardroom.