[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Shining Through Inspiring Voices of Autism with show host Jennifer Dantzler. My name is Jake and I have autism. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about the world of autism. If you enjoy what you hear today, don't forget to follow this podcast.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hey everyone, this is Jennifer Dantzler and I'm the executive director and founder of inspirend, a nonprofit whose mission is to create truly inclusive communities through education and engagement. The goal of this podcast is to shine a light on real people and their stories in hopes of inspiring others who are on this journey of autism. Either themselves, their child, their loved one, their co worker. I truly believe ignorance is not bliss and we cannot be inclusive communities if we do not understand the people in the community.
With autism now affecting 1 in 31 people, we need to get louder about this topic. We recognize that autism is a spectrum. There are a lot of people with a lot of different needs, a lot of resources available or none available. And we know that in every episode we can't meet everyone's needs for their specific interest.
However, we hope that in each episode you do gleam some kind of insight as to how you can help your child or yourself be a better advocate. And as we go through our podcasts, our goal really is to address the entire spectrum, the various needs, the various environments that we're going to be in. And we hope that there's something in every episode for each one of you. So let's get started.
We are here today with a very special friend of mine, Dr. Casey Sheridan. I want to apologize because there it first happened. I am recovering a little bit from a flu or some other fun winter sickness. So I apologize if my voice is a little off today. Casey, thank you so much for being here today.
[00:01:38] Speaker C: I'm very excited. It's my pleasure.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: I have known Casey for a little over 12 years. Kasey and I have both worked in the world of special education in some form or fashion here in the Lake Houston area in the northeast part of Houston, Texas. And Casey has just so much information and experience and life background, and a lot of what she does now is help advocate for parents. So I want to back up a little bit, Casey, and why don't you first tell me a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today.
[00:02:04] Speaker C: So I've worked in education for over 15 years at both the elementary and secondary level, have worked as an adjunct professor, training teachers and teaching teachers. I was a special education classroom teacher. I was a district level administrator as a behavior specialist as well as behavioral Therapist for you, Jen worked underneath you as a clinical supervisor. And now I do a lot of training at the national and state level. I now work as an advocate and consultant and trainer to help others learn how to support and foster growth for neurodivergent populations.
Moved into that due to the fact that as I was working in the public education sector and then working in the clinical setting, I saw a lot of parents and guardians struggling with how to work with the school, how to translate what their child needed to ensure that they were getting it in the classroom and the child could be successful. And it was very frustrating to me because I couldn't offer the same level of support to those parents as I could privately, as I could whenever I was in the public education sector. When I got an opportunity to open my own business and open my own company, that was really the thing that I wanted to move into, was helping parents and guardians and other people really learn how to advocate for their child and advocate for themselves to ensure that the person individually can grow and be successful and encourage collaboration between the parents, the individual, as well as the school or the organization. Now, I not only work with parents, I train teachers, but I also work with adults who are trying to get ADA accommodations, like at work and things like that.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: So, okay, yes. So tell me a little bit about your service. What's the name of it? Where can people find you?
[00:03:50] Speaker C: My company is called Enlightened Consulting. You can find me online@ enlightenedconsulting.org My services include the non legal educational advocacy as well. Well as the consultation and training. Non Legal Educational advocacy is where you hire someone to look through like the IEP paperwork or the 504 documents or your ADA accommodations and really look through them from somebody who has a lot of experience with the paperwork and knows how to translate what it is you need into the language that it needs to look like in order for you to get the services that are important to you, for you to be successful.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: And I think that's so important because I think there are many parents out there who think the first step has got to be an attorney. It's either, you know, it's feast or famine. They're either in these ards or in these meetings by themselves, and they're not sure if what they're reading is right or if they're getting the best thing for their child. And their first thought might be, I need to hire an attorney or I can't afford to hire an attorney. Now what? And so you are that person that would go into The ARD with them. Right, right. And help them advocate and say, well, according to this assessment, he's five years behind speech. I think we need to have more than once a week speech therapy, for example. Right.
[00:05:02] Speaker C: Also, I look at, you know, have they had the same goal for five years and haven't made progress or only made minimal progress, but we haven't adjusted the goal. I want to back up for a second to your thing about parents thinking they need an attorney. That happens a lot. But oftentimes what happens then is that it shuts down collaboration. It shuts down communication between the parent and the school. The student then is languishing in a situation where they're not getting the support that they need while the attorneys do get out charging a lot per hour. So I really try to find collaborative solutions that allow the child to get what they need as quickly as possible. That being said, that doesn't mean that the school doesn't need to have accountability for not providing support. But my first goal is to ensure that the child is getting what they need in order to be safe and successful before we move forward with looking at complaints or those types of things.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: And I think also what you had just said too was about getting onto paper what it is the child needs. For those of us that have looked at IEPs for the last 30 years. Right. We kind of take it for granted. It's not Greek to us.
[00:06:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: But you get a parent of a newly diagnosed three year old, they sit there with this whopping huge document with all of these acronyms and things that they don't know what they're looking at. And you sit down with them and say, okay, what is it you want for your child to do and learn? Where do you want them to be? Right. What setting within the, say, the school setting make that much more translatable, doable for the parents to understand 100%.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: And a big piece of it is that if you as the parent don't understand it, a brand new teacher is not either. If you as the parent don't understand it, a paraprofessional with nothing more than a high school education is not going to understand it either. So if the accommodations are vague and not specific to your child, if the goals have too many technical words that nobody else can understand, if you have to have a master's degree and a special decoder ring that you got out of a cereal box to understand it, that is not an appropriate IEP for your kid. Legally, part of the IEP process is the parent's ability to follow along with their child's IEP progress. So if they don't understand the iep, they can't meaningfully participate. They cannot determine if their child is making progress because they don't understand what their child should be making progress on. So as a parent, if you don't understand it, it is 100% okay to ask to go back to Ard to make it translatable and ensure that it's on paper, whatever it is that you guys talk about, to make it more easily translatable.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: And I think with that said too, sometimes there are parents who say, well, I don't want to bring anyone in because I, I don't want to make them angry from the beginning. But that's not what your role is. Right? Attorneys, as you said, it's a different situation. You're really helped to almost be the translator for the parents is all you're doing. You're not questioning the school district, you're just, you're really trying to help get the parents desires set in a way to where now it can be put into the school Jumbo school.
[00:07:48] Speaker C: Legal jargon.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: School jargon. Exactly, exactly.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a big piece of what I do is I see myself as an education translator. Just having worked in education for so long in so many different roles, being able to say yes, that is the way you would say it in normal language. But in education speak, this is the word you use. And that often is where parents really get caught up because they'll say things like how is my child doing? Or just very generic statements that don't get them the information that they want and they need very specific language.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:18] Speaker C: If you don't know it, then you don't know what to ask.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: What do you see that parents need.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: Help with the most specificity in the questions and not being afraid to ask for exactly what it is that you're wanting or looking for. Being very direct, being very specific, but also asking for copies of any data that's taken about your child. A lot of times schools will call and have conversations and say X, Y and Z happened. As a parent, you're just supposed to take it as truth. What they said is obviously true. Ask to go up and see the video footage. Ask to see whatever was written down about it. If you know it has to do with your child struggling on assignments, ask for copies of the assignments. Don't be afraid to ask for the data so you yourself can look at it and evaluate if their interpretation, what's occurring, matches what you understand about your Kid.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: So we're actually about to go into a document that you've created that will be shared on our show Notes. So we very much appreciate this. You've titled this the top five most dangerous mistakes when advocating for your child and what you can do about them. So we're just going to hit these at a little bit of a high level. But why don't we start with first, number one, which is waiting too long to get support.
So tell me a little bit about that.
[00:09:32] Speaker C: People call me for help only when things are, quote, really bad. The most common thing that happens is people will call me and say, my child is blowing up. My child is destroying the classroom. My child. My child is five years behind in reading, and they've been getting services and intervention, and I don't know what more to do. You know, the school is calling me every day, so I'm walking into a problem that's already really big. And so it didn't get there overnight. So it's not going to be fixed overnight. It takes a while to fix it because by the time help is sought, patterns are already entrenched. The child has engaged in behavioral patterns that have now become truth for them. The school has a vision of the child that they're operating off of, and the parents are emotionally escalated and charged. And so it is a powder keg to try to go in and diffuse and collaborate on and find common understanding in order to get to a solution. And so it just takes a lot longer to fix it. When there is documentation, it typically favors the school or favors the teacher and doesn't always accurately represent what happened or what's going on. Most damaging part is a lot of times by that point, the child already has been harmed emotionally, socially, academically.
And to get them caught up, to get them back to where the child feels successful is going to take a lot more time, energy and effort. We can create the most beautiful plan, but if the child doesn't buy into it, if the child no longer believes they can be successful because of the experiences they've had, it's a much harder uphill battle. Definitely bring in support, someone with a fresh set of eyes, even a therapist, somebody. Whenever the school story just keeps changing or you feel confused by other meetings, you feel emotionally overwhelmed. Like, you know that you should be able to advocate for your kid, but you can't figure out what to say because every time they call you, your brain goes blank because you're so upset. And that happens, especially as a mom.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. The one that always kills me is When I get a call and it's a parent where whose child had been sent home 10 times in the last two months due to behavior, which is not legal, but it's done because the school's not sure what to do with the child. And so they call mom and dad or mom says, I'll come pick them up right? Then next, you know, they're sitting in ARD where the school is recommending a change of placement. And really we should have had you in there. After the very first time, they felt like they had to send him home because of his behavior and start proactively working on where can we adjust and where can we make things different. Because what we do know, right, from the world of behavior is that we've also now reinforced that inappropriate behavior way too much by saying them learning, oh well, if I kick or scream or throw a chair, I'll get to go home and watch my iPad or get mom or dad's attention.
And so therefore I'm going to continue doing that. Right.
[00:12:22] Speaker C: Or I don't like school. School is hard. It's hard for me to learn. And if I kick or scream or throw a chair, I don't have to do the reading, I don't have to do the math. They take it away.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:31] Speaker C: And I get to hang out with the principal or the counselor who lets me color. And that is not as challenging as the reading 100,000%. And yes, there's a lot of steps that have to happen legally before they can change a child's placement other than just sending them home.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: Right. If you're not sure if you have that little mommy or daddy gut that says I'm not sure that they're doing the right thing, you know, to Casey's point, don't wait like just get someone in to help you to. And it might even be that they. You just meet with the parents first. And it's not that you're going into the school, you're just reviewing the documents, meeting with the parents, finding out what they know and giving them advice. It doesn't have to be that now you're in this formal ARD meeting either yet, right?
[00:13:12] Speaker C: Right. No, I do a free 30 minute consultation and that happens a lot. Parents will call me and just say, here's the situation. And I'll ask a couple of questions, have you tried blank, blank and blank? And they'll say no. And I'd say I'd start there. Call me back if that doesn't work.
A lot of times people don't necessarily need Somebody like me, they just need to know where to go. They need to know what the next steps are. So absolutely. Or like you said, just have somebody review the documents and have that consultation.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: A lot of what we see, unfortunately, is the objectives and the criterion for mastery were maybe a little too low. So this poor sweet child is bored out of their mind, and then that's why they're doing what they're doing. Or the criterion might not be truly measurable to know, can we say they learned their numbers or their letters or whatever they're doing. And so it's about you just helping tweak that to make that. Those measurements a little bit more accountable.
[00:14:04] Speaker C: Yeah. To your point with that, a lot of times I see goals that are also giant, like, things that literally could be worked on until they're dead. And like, how do you determine mastery on a skill that someone could literally work on forever? Especially with behavior goals and social skills goals and pragmatic communication and things like that, they need to be broken down into smaller chunks that they need to be able to have measurable progress. To your point.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Okay, great. Okay. Number two, agreeing to wait and see.
Talk about that one.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: So this is a big one. You know, your kid is struggling, and you go to the school and say, I need my child to be tested for dyslexia. And they say, well, let's try this and wait and see. Or, they're not failing yet. That's always my favorite. They're not failing yet. So we're gonna wait until they fail and then we'll see what happens. We're just gonna wait and see. Kind of. We'll let them mature. We'll let them, you know, develop and see what happens. Let's give it some more time. We'll monitor. It's too early to evaluate, but it steals time, progress, and leverage from your child. It results in regression socially, emotionally, academically, and especially behaviorally. While everybody's, quote, waiting, your kid is languishing, your kid is in pain, your kid is suffering. I understand from the school's perspective, because again, I was in schools for so long. There needs to be an actionable step. They need to be able to say, in the meantime, we're going to do this. We're not just going to let them sit there and stare at them and collect data. It can be extremely costly for younger children and those who internalize behaviors to recover because they've already collapsed while we waited.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:38] Speaker C: And that's not okay.
So if that happens and ask for specifics. Ask what specific intervention Strategy or support is going to be provided when, how many minutes a day, how many minutes a week, what can you expect?
And accommodations. If they're going to say, well, we're going to use these specific accommodations with your child. Now, the kid is having difficulty with writing, so they're having a lot of behaviors around writing. So they say, we're going to use speech to text. We're going to, you know, have the kid talk to a computer instead of having to handwrite something. Who's going to teach them that accommodation? Who's going to teach the teacher?
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:12] Speaker C: What data is going to be collected to ensure that they're actually doing it?
[00:16:15] Speaker B: And to your point on that, when it says wait and see, okay, maybe we do need to give it five attempts of seeing if that accommodation. To your point, providing they know how to use that accommodation, so it's okay to say, okay, well, and we can come back for a meeting. I think that's the other thing parents think is we have to come back to formal art every time. But you don't. It's a call. It's meeting with the teacher in a week to see how the accommodation went. It can be as simple as that. And so by asking those questions, you're not asking too much. You're not stepping out of line.
[00:16:44] Speaker C: Absolutely not.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: You're saying, okay, wait and see.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: I get it.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: This might be a new strategy, a new curriculum. But wait and see for how long?
[00:16:50] Speaker C: Right. Asking for the timeline and the timeline for action, but also asking, and this is a huge one, what is our metric where we determine that it has been successful or hasn't? They'll say, you know, we need to wait and see. But wait and see for what? How many failing grades? How many behavioral incidents? What determines an action step? Or what determines if they're being successful? And often they're like, well, we'll just know that when we see it. No, we're all going to agree right now on what metric we're looking for. If you do come back together and nobody knows the answer to that question, then you're coming again and again and again. Meanwhile, your child is languishing and hurting, making sure you're asking about that, making sure that you can have access to the data. This is a big mistake that parents make that they'll. The school will say, well, we'll let you know. We take data, we collect data, and when progress reports go out, that's when we'll let you know how they're doing. Well, that automatically means that that's three weeks that you don't know how they're doing. So if they're collecting data using a Google sheet, if they're collecting data using anything where you can have just view only access, ask for that so you can see it too. So you can also be reviewing it, you can also be tracking it. You show up to that meeting and that's the first time you've seen that data. You're not in a place to meaningfully participate in that conversation about how to help your kid. You're processing all the data that they've.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Handed to you Right in that moment, in that pretty intimidating meeting.
[00:18:06] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: And not being able to really stop and analyze and think about it or compare it to. Is that what you see at home?
[00:18:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Or, you know, or what did the teacher last year say? You know, and it's just too much in the moment, you know, And I think overall that's part of the problem. And I think one of the things I'd love to. For the parents listening to takeaways, in our world of disabilities and challenges and labels, time is typically not our friend. And we already know that most of our guys, when they start off school, start off behind, right? And then that leap gets so big. And so time is not our friend. We don't have a semester to wait. We don't have a marking period to wait or grading period to wait. Because every day we should be making minor adjustments to programming as teachers. Right? And sometimes that's realistic and sometimes that's not. And unfortunately, sometimes it's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.
Right? And it's the parent who's asking for that data that's going to get the data and the parent who's not asking for that data.
That child might not be getting as much data. I mean, that's the reality. It's hard. And there are some absolutely incredible teachers out there and there are some incredible teachers out there that are doing everything they can. And when they have 22 kids in the class and a third of them have special needs IEPs, and they have a paraprofessional who comes in once a day for 30 minutes, there's only so much they can do. That's just the reality of life, 100,000%.
[00:19:29] Speaker C: And I see a lot where the student had a fantastic second grade teacher, but the second grade teacher didn't know how fantastic she was and didn't know that all the extra things she was doing to help this child be successful were additional accommodations, were additional supports. So the kid goes into third grade but none of those got written down. None of those got put anywhere.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Really good point.
[00:19:47] Speaker C: So now the child goes into third grade, they have a brand new teacher who's maybe on her first or second year and she's just learning, but she doesn't know to do all these amazing things the second grade teacher did. And now the child is struggling, the child is failing, and the parent says, last year they weren't. I don't know what happened. And you go and talk to the second grade teacher and the second grade teacher just says, well, I was just teaching, right? And they don't understand that these specific things are what made the difference, making sure that those go onto their plan.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: So that's a really good point. You know, almost at the end of each year, maybe the parent should sit down with the teacher and the second grade teacher in this example and just say, walk me through a day in the life of what you do here so that you at least can get it all written down to then share with the third grade teacher. I know we had a parent whose sons are both rock stars now, who are adults, and she did that every year. She made an All About Me book that she then passed around, especially in high school, about both her children, their interests, their triggers, their talents, their skills, their unique abilities. And she had actually put into the art that every teacher had to read it and sign off that they'd read it, that they had read it, which was so helpful, especially once you started getting into grades where you have multiple teachers, it's very hard to keep consistency at that point. So to this point, and even in the younger grades at the end of the year, maybe as the parent, you take ownership of trying to summarize and maybe it's an informal jargon. Well, I know the teacher did this. And then when you're in the ARD for the next year, they can say, oh, that's this accommodation, right?
[00:21:14] Speaker C: Yeah, right, exactly, exactly. And kind of a personal story with that. We were trying to get my daughter's ADHD diagnosis. In order to get an ADHD diagnosis, the teachers have to fill out questionnaires and have to indicate if they see certain difficulties. And the first round her teachers filled out that she was fine. I went and talked to them and I said, talk me through each one. Oh, well, of course she can stay in her area, but we also let her stand up and walk around her desk and okay, she finishes her work really quickly, but then I give her class jobs. But she gets bored really fast with just one job. So I usually give her three or four and she does like part of them and then there's someone else who finishes the jobs for her. It was like all of that, that's an accommodation for adhd, Right.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: It needs to be documented for the next teacher.
[00:21:59] Speaker C: And so they were like, oh, that's what this meant. That's what that. Yes.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: And that's why you were seeing at the beginning of the next grade some issues, maybe some pushback.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: Right. And so that's why we had, you know, the next grade level. The teachers weren't doing the same things that her teachers the year before had been doing. And so that's why we went to get her evaluated. And when the teachers filled out the paperwork, she's great. She does great in my classroom. Okay, does she?
Going through these very special things that they had done for her in order to accommodate her need to move and constantly talk and constantly be doing something and engaged. They did not realize themselves that this was going above and beyond. They just thought it was supporting a child.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: So I guess for our parents, one of the call to actions is document, document, document. Because again, even if it's an informal language and get that into the documentation for the next teacher so that they know what was successful or what was not successful, 100%.
[00:22:53] Speaker C: And if you get something back saying your child's doing fine, but you've had multiple conversations with the teachers where the teachers are saying, we're doing X, Y and Z, so they're fine. Or they were struggling and now they're making progress, but they're quote, fine. They're still not, they're still below grade level.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:09] Speaker C: So making sure that it states exactly what is going on.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Well, that takes us naturally into the next rule or rule of thumb you have for you, which is not understanding the power of disagreement. So talk about disagreement. And is it okay to disagree?
[00:23:23] Speaker C: Absolutely. Absolutely. The hard part with these meetings is they are fast and furious and the school comes in with paperwork that's already been developed and they are rapid firing information at you. A lot of times they have already determined what their course of action needs to be and things like that. And they're just looking for you to agree so that they can take the action steps that they think is best for your kid. But if you don't agree, it can end absolutely hurt your child. Because silence means agreement in the record or in the documentation. So once it's written, it's very hard to undo. So now we're at record level damage your ability to involve the state, your ability to write a Complaint your ability to contact the superintendent and say they're trying to change my child's placement after sending him home 10 times, but not changing his behavior plan or not, you know, increasing his level of support. What the superintendent's gonna come back and say, or the state is. But you agreed. You didn't say anything in the meeting. Well, yes, I did. I said stuff in the meeting. Yes, but it's not written in the deliberations. And you checked the box saying you agreed. And is this your signature right here? Yes, it is. And you agree, making sure that you firmly and professionally say, I don't agree that this plan meets my child's needs. This sentence alone protects your kid. And making sure that it's written in the deliberations. If deliberations aren't taken, make sure you email that statement to the people that were in the meeting and say that.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: You want it attached to the art document.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: Correct. You can write a letter of disagreement stating that I disagree with the plan that was developed and here's why. I don't think it meets the needs of my child. You don't have to disagree. And this is the big piece. You don't have to disagree with the whole plan. Sometimes you agree with the accommodations they're proposing. Sometimes you agree with the goals, but you don't agree with the placement. You don't agree with the level of support. You can say, I agree with all these pieces.
I disagree with this. Oftentimes you can find a way to move forward with the sections you have agreed to to ensure that your child is getting updated support. So ensuring that your child continues to be successful while the disagreement is being resolved.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:28] Speaker C: Because oftentimes what happens if there's disagreement? Because it doesn't happen very often. Parents don't often disagree. The schools don't know what to do. And so they freeze. And so it's like, well, okay, we're going to stop. We're going to stop everything.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Right?
[00:25:40] Speaker C: Nothing that we've discussed moves forward.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: And sometimes with big disagreements that can take years to resolve it.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:48] Speaker C: So.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: So it's not all or nothing.
[00:25:50] Speaker C: It is not all or not.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: You can agree to portions of it.
I do always recommend to parents, too, when I've gone to sit in ards, like have a piece of paper on the side that you're taking notes the whole time and writing down all the things you want to be sure in the minutes. Because I know you and I both have been in a few marathon ards where after hour eight, you're not Going to remember what was discussed in hour one. And so you want to have those notes written down because we want to make sure, to your point, that they get in the deliberations. And it's okay to say we can just attach my notes if we'd like, you know, where I can write them up more formally. But you do have the right to have those things in those minutes.
[00:26:24] Speaker C: And you also have the right to record.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:26] Speaker C: So if you are a person who does not process quickly in the moment, you don't have to agree at the end of the meeting. You can ask for it to be recorded, you can say, you don't have to check, agree in that moment. You do have a window in which you can review the documentation, you can listen to the recording and you can come back if you need to, but.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: You have to tell them you're recording because then they will record.
[00:26:50] Speaker C: Also, Texas is a two party recording state. So you have to make sure that they agree to record. Absolutely. And if you don't agree at the very end and you're saying, I need a little bit of time to review or think about it, say that out loud. But absolutely do not hesitate to disagree. A lot of parents think that it's rude, it's confrontational, it's gonna hurt the relationship. It's really gonna hurt your kid more than it's gonna hurt the relationship with the school.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:13] Speaker C: Because if you don't say it, nobody else is going to.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Right. Okay, great. Okay, next one. Number four. Letting behavior eclipse disability. What does this mean?
[00:27:23] Speaker C: The focus stays on discipline, the focus stays on the behavior, and it becomes a very reactive situation where we're more concerned about the child throwing the chair than why the child is throwing the chair, what made them mad, what unmet need happened or is continuing to happen that is resulting in the behavior. And the behavior actually becomes framed as defiance. And this is what's really interesting. It becomes framed as intentional and a choice rather than communication or part of their disability. So the child's impulsive and so the child, like my daughter, can't stay seated. So she's up, she's moving around, but when they tell her to sit down, she goes and sits down. But then she pops back up 10 seconds later. That's intentional. That's being oppositional. That is a choice. She's making a choice because she can choose to sit down for a bit, not understanding that it is part of her adhd.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:08] Speaker C: Or even just sensory overload. And once behavior is framed as willful or a choice or intentional, and no longer connected to the disability. Then the supports decrease, discipline increases. So reinforcement goes down, discipline or punishment goes up, and the disability fades from the narrative, and it all becomes about how the child is choosing to do something wrong.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: So how do we combat that? We make sure that's part of the behavior plan, part of the definition of diagnosis. What do we do?
[00:28:35] Speaker C: All of those things is you call a meeting and you have a very specific conversation about their disability and how their disability is impacting them. And you ask for the data, you ask for the documentation, and you use that along with that diagnosis to show these do go together. Understand that what supports they're actually getting at school and then talking about, well, they're missing a lot of support in this. A lot of the behavior is happening in English, and they are really struggling with reading. There are behaviors during reading. So what are we doing? Well, right now, we're removing him from the classroom, and we're putting him in the principal's office, and he's coloring. Okay. But that doesn't help him with reading.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Because the behavior is due to a disability or a deficit in learning. Not a willful choice. Correct.
[00:29:21] Speaker C: Looking at what. What is the unmet need behind the behavior? Is it a sensory need? Is there something else? Looking at that function of behavior, and this is a big one. A lot of times the intervention doesn't match the actual function. It inadvertently reinforces it.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: Yes. Time out. When the child wants to be removed from something and we put him in time out, so guess what? He won.
[00:29:43] Speaker C: Yes. So functions of behavior, you know, as, you know, are the escape attention. They want access to something, or it's just a sensory need. Something's too loud, Something's, you know, scratchy and itchy, and they want away from it. Let's say a child wants to escape reading, and so they act out during reading. They get to go to the principal's office, and then the next day, they act out faster, they act out more intensely. Well, now I get to go home because they sent me home. I really want to be home because I don't like school. School's hard. Okay? So if I act out intensely at the very beginning, I get to go home faster, and they're gonna send me home for longer. And then I go into these meetings, and the administrators are saying, we don't understand why the behavior's escalating.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:23] Speaker C: Okay. You did it.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: I hate to. I'm gonna say it nicely, but you did it.
[00:30:28] Speaker C: You did it. Yeah. This is not a them problem. This is a you problem. We need to figure out how to not be giving him what he wants and figure out how to intervene while the child is still there. The big problem that I want to hit on is internalizing behaviors can be just as dangerous as externalizing, sometimes more. And the kids who internalize are at higher risk for things like school avoidance, depression, hopelessness, self harm, academic collapse. But when a child is not disruptive, schools don't see that they're in crisis. So this can look like they're not attending school as often. They're failing. They're not turning in their work. They're only doing half of their work work. But they're not loud, they're not throwing chairs. Right. So these internalizers are quietly suffering. But the teachers are saying, but they're okay.
They're polite, they're fine.
But they used to be making 90s and now they're making 60s. They used to try to go out on the, you know, and talk to their friends, and now they're not talking to anybody.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:26] Speaker C: So making sure that you're looking at those types of behaviors as well. For our kids that have anxiety or our kids that have other kids who have autoimmune problems and things like that, that their body doesn't feel right and so they're internalizing everything around them.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:42] Speaker C: It can be just as big of a deal as the child who's throwing the chair. But the child is throwing the chair gets all the attention.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Exactly. Okay, I feel like we could stay on this one forever, but because out of time, respect for our listeners. Okay, last one is being reactive instead of strategic.
[00:31:56] Speaker C: So this one kind of goes with number one. And so it's kind of like with the waiting too long to get support. If you're only responding to the school after suspensions, removals, failing grades, crisis calls, then by the time you're reacting, the school has already formed the narrative about your child. At this point, the school is driving the story, not your child, not the parent. So decisions about the type of support your kid actually needs are going to be defined by the school. So at this point, like we just talked about with the behavior is determined not to be part of the disability. If you're coming in and saying, my child needs more support in reading, they're saying, no, it's intentional. Our data supports that it's intentional. It leads to a loss of control for the parent, for the child, and then it just escalates and it gets very emotionally charged and it's very hard to fix and come back and find that Collaborative common ground. So that's what it means by being reactive instead of strategic. The minute you see that, your kids start saying things like I hate school or they're looking at me funny or my, you know, nobody wants to play with me on the playground anymore or, or things like that, start asking questions.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Or for our more impaired children coming home always with soiled pants or very dirty shirts or torn up papers in.
[00:33:08] Speaker C: Their backpack or torn up clothes. Cause they've chewed through the neck of their shirt. They've chewed through certain things or things that you sent them with for their sensory items are just missing. They're gone and the teacher doesn't know where they went. Or my favorite is they have new bruises and you're not sure how they got them. You're not sure if they've hurt themselves or if somebody touched them or grabbed them inappropriately or something along those lines. Absolutely. Be looking for those indicators.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: I would also say, and I do say this with positive intent, but I do encourage parents to do as much of this communication through email.
[00:33:38] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: Because then it's in writing.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Sometimes we have parents who get in the habit where they just have a phone call with the teacher at the end of each day that essentially didn't happen if things had to go legal. Right. To your point. Then those phone calls, there's no proof of what happened on those phone calls.
[00:33:54] Speaker C: Absolutely. And that's a big part of my company, is that I want to train parents to no longer need me. I'm trying with my clients to work myself out of a job. So I want them to be able to advocate on their own. And that's one of the big lessons I tell them is any type of verbal communication. Follow it up with an email. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. Today we discussed blank, blank and blank. It doesn't have to be huge, it just has to document. It's not a gotcha for the teacher. It's imagine if you had to move suddenly because your job changed and now you and I had this happen to a client, she had to move suddenly to Utah, but all the supports and things that her child were getting were just verbal discussions between her and his teachers.
And so we're trying to match support in Utah and they're saying, but we don't have any documentation of these things.
So if you're having these conversations at the end of the day, send an email. Thank you so much for doing X, Y and Z.
Thank you for talking to me today. If the para who brings your child to help, you know, put them in the car at the end of the day, pokes their head in and tells you a couple of things. Send a follow up email.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Okay. Yep.
[00:34:59] Speaker C: Ms. Nancy talked to me about blank.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Again, we've sort of talked about it because of the adversarial relationship, but the whole needing to move and even just, I see this a lot. Right. When you're moving from elementary to middle to high school, even, just, even if you're still local, the environment's changed, the culture's change, the administrators change, just by nature the beast. And so having more of that documentation is really important.
[00:35:18] Speaker C: It also helps with that transition that we just talked about. You go from a classroom with a really great teacher to a classroom with a brand new teacher and you're going in and you're asking for additional help and additional support to match what they got in the previous year. And in that meeting they're saying we don't have any documentation to show that that was actually happening.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Right? Yes. And then we have to come back to Ard and the first Ard we can get scheduled is 45 days from now and et cetera, et cetera.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: And again, it just pushes back you getting help.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:35:42] Speaker C: So you being able to walk in with those emails and say, no, there is documentation on these dates and these times the teacher and I discuss these things. And again, it is, you're not, it's not a gotcha for the teacher. It's not anything. It's just documentation for that transition to ensure.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: It's just a running record. More so. Yeah, more so. Running record. Okay. We are running out of time. So again, we do appreciate in the show notes you will be putting some of these notes because I think there were still three or four pages we haven't even gotten to. But I don't want to lose my listeners here. Do you have any resources or go tos for parents to recommend to read or look up or, or find, you know, outside of of course calling you, which we hope they do. Yeah, you know what, what do they do on the Internet? Where do they find help?
[00:36:26] Speaker C: There's disabilityrights.org that has a lot of really great information.
I do have some resources on my website where I put out blogs and different things for people to look at. It's difficult to answer that question because there's a lot of misinformation. I think the big thing is just learning the educational version of the word. So my kid needs more support. What that means in education speak is my kid needs someone to go into the classroom and follow them around and help them. What the parent means is they just need more specific instruction in reading. They need somebody to go talk to them every day. So being just more specific with what it is you're asking for and what it is you're wanting can really help out a lot. Sometimes the school can be a support by just asking very specific questions.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: Yeah, and I've, you know, we both have seen very successful situations. I think it's the ones that aren't successful that are hard to watch just because things can be repaired. Like when you walk into a classroom to observe and give recommendations, you see whether it's one teacher and one pair and 20 kids. And so, you know, we're giving recommendations that are doable but are also still the rights of the child to have. It's complicated, but it is doable. And I, you know, I think the message from today is one document, two, don't wait to advocate. Right. And be proactive in the beginning. Like, don't wait for it to be trouble. Don't wait for it to be trouble. Like, just be active from the beginning. What is something you would recommend to a parent of a newly diagnosed child?
[00:37:56] Speaker C: Learn as much as you can about their disability. Talk to the medical professionals. Ask about nuances specific to your child. Like, that disability does not define them. They are a product of their environment. So how does that disability manifest for them? And also think very carefully about how you have created systems in your own environment to help accommodate your child that you may not even be aware of. And so that is my first recommendation. After that, it is going to, especially if your child is struggling at school and things like that, going to the school, having conversations with them about how to get your child support.
But understanding their disability, understanding what you do at home will help drive that conversation. Because when the school comes back to you and says, what do you want us to do? And you say, well, they have adhd. What can you do for adhd? And the school's looking at you blankly because they're saying they're fine.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: Right.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: But they're not. Because you've created all these systems at home. You've created all these different things.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Right? Because they might be coming into school with a great piece of homework done and the school doesn't know that it was a knockdown drag out between mom and the child for three hours at the dinner table where they're both crying to get this homework assignment done. But the homework assignment did come in and the child did it. Mom just created the supports to help them do it. But all the teacher knows is they only missed one on the assignment and they didn't know this trouble that went into getting there. And so the teacher can't know that if you don't share that.
[00:39:24] Speaker C: And a lot of times I even think about my high functioning autistic clients where they're masking all day at school and they get home and they crash, they go hide in their room for hours at a time. They're not doing homework at home, they're not engaging. They're no longer doing extracurricular activities because they're spending all of their time, energy and effort at school masking and trying to pretend to be okay and letting the school know that, like absolutely having those conversations. So if your child is newly diagnosed, understanding their disability, understanding how their biological makeup, how their culture, how who they are impacts how that disability manifests, thinking about how you at home are supporting them. Because my son used to hate wearing socks, so I had to turn his socks inside out so that the seam was outside until I learned about seamless socks. Because he would tear them off all the time. That was a sensory thing. But when people would ask me, does he have problems with socks? My response was no, because I have a system as a.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Right, right. That great example.
[00:40:25] Speaker C: That is what you need to share with the school. Those are the things.
When he gets home from school, he takes off his shoes and socks and he goes and hides in his room for two hours.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:40:36] Speaker C: Oh, well, kids aren't supposed to do that. That's what the school will tell you. Yeah, they're not.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:40:41] Speaker C: Making sure that you're bringing that to their attention so that when you're going to ask for that support, they and you are on the same page as to what you understand the problem is so that they understand how to support.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: Wonderful. Wonderful. Okay, so before we wrap up with finding where we can find you again, I do want to mention that on our website, inspirend.org we do have a workshop that Casey so wonderfully did for us. A Lunch and Learn. And it's recorded so you can watch it and you'll see within it the slides of some of the documents and some of the things that we talked about today.
So, Casey, where can everyone find you?
[00:41:15] Speaker C: Yeah, you can just find me on my website@ enlightenedconsulting.org and there's a contact me page. Just fill that out and I'm happy to talk to anybody who needs any support or assistance.
[00:41:25] Speaker B: Well, Dr. Casey Sheridan, thank you so much for being here today, the information was invaluable and Please Parents, Reach out if you need more help.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Planning for the future can feel overwhelming, but you don't have to do it alone. Join Inspire North D for the Lighting the Path for the Future conference, a roadmap for people with disabilities on February 25, 2026. From legal and financial planning to education, advocacy, skills for independence, and a powerful panel of neurodiverse voices, you'll gain real tools to plan with confidence. Join us at the Kevin Brady Community center from 9am to 3:30pm Tickets are $100 and must be purchased in advance.
Ticket includes lunch and conference materials. Light the Path Forward Register today at www.inspirend.org.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: If you need help or resources. Whether you're a parent, someone on the spectrum, a business or a community organization who want to know more or need help or want to share resources, please reach out to
[email protected] thanks for joining us.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: Sun Shining through Inspiring Voices of Autism. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow us, leave a review and share it with others who want to celebrate neurodiversity. Until next time, keep shining.
