Homeschooling Kids with Autism with Debbie Reber

Welcome to Teach your Kids, a podcast about homeschooling, whole child development and the future of education. I'm Manisha, a teacher of 20 years and the founder of Teach youh Kids and an online homeschooling community. We offer community support and social clubs for kids, coding, creative writing, Minecraft and more. Today's podcast is about autism and Differently Wired Kids and I am so thrilled to welcome Debbie Reber. Welcome.

Hi Manisha. Thank you.

Yes. She is the CEO of Tilt Parenting and the creator of the Differently Wired Club. More than 20% of today's children are in some way neurodivergent or what Debbie Reber calls differently wired. So we're going to talk today about our Differently wired kids and how we can support them. And I can't think of anyone better to be here to answer our questions than Debbie. She's a parenting activist, bestselling author, podcast host, the founder of Tilt the Tilt Parenting Podcast, which is the top performing podcast for parents, caregivers, educators and professionals raising and supporting neurodivergent children. With 5 million downloads. She's a certified positive discipline trainer and a regular contributor to Attitude magazine. Her most recent book, Differently Wired A Parent's Guide to Raising Any Typical Child with Confidence and Hope is a must have. If that is a question of yours. And Tilt Parenting is just an amazing company looking to change the way neurodifferences in children are supported and looked at in our society. She is just so knowledgeable about adhd, learning disabilities, autism, giftedness, processing, challenges, twice acceptable children, and more. We are just so happy to have you here and just thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me and answer questions from our community today.

Thank you. I'm really happy to be here.

I'm going to start with a question. We're going to go right into the meat of the matter. This question is about if a parent doesn't want to homeschool their child and what successful homeschooling might look like for them. So perhaps this parent has tried a lot of schools. Nothing has worked. The child has meltdowns when they have to go to school or even been excluded from school, or maybe even their child is begging to be homeschooled and the parent just feels like I don't want to do this and might even be ashamed to say, to be honest, my child is challenging. I need the break that school provides. They could be a single parent with minimal supports. Maybe they have health issues, a younger child, child at home, and it's just in some cases you know, a child can be really challenging. They might have adhd, autism, be sensory overwhelmed, pda. They could even be aggressive and violent. So could you just talk a little bit about that situation and how you might start a conversation with that parent and what homeschooling could potentially look like them in, for them in the best case scenario?

Yes. And it's a great question because so many of us raising neurodivergent kids do end up homeschooling, at least for some portion of our kids education. Whether or not it's, you know, an emergency situation where a child is disinvited to school or they are in school, refusal or, or maybe it is a conscious choice, like, you know what, this is what's right for our family. I was a reluctant homeschool parent. I'll just say that was not my plan. And I, I ended up homeschooling for six years.

Wow. I would never guess hearing your inspiring talks. Wow.

Yeah. No, I, it was suggested to me multiple times when my child was much younger, like I think homeschooling. And I was like, no, that is not happening for me. I, it's too intense. I do need the break. I don't, I, I'm not equipped to do this. I have my own career. You know, there were a lot of factors and I think, you know, kind of the first thing I would say is that homeschooling is something that we can redefine. I, I know that for me, I had a very kind of rigid definition of what it meant to homeschool. I thought that I was essentially replicating school at home. I needed to have like this established curriculum and we needed to accomplish all these things on any given day. And I really saw or was afraid that my job was going to be trying to always force essentially a child who doesn't want to do things to do things. And I was imagining all the conflict that would ensue and, and I think I started out homeschooling that way as well. But what I learned, what I would encourage listeners to think about is actually homeschooling. If you zoom out and think about what is the purpose of education and what are we doing? We're really trying to help neurodivergent kids understand their strengths, understand how they learn to love, to learn, to grow, that love of learning to, to just really get to understand who they are in the world, how they experience the world. So with that bigger goal of becoming an adult who is able to create a meaningful life for themselves. So when we zoom out and really look at those bigger goals, we can start to see that homeschooling can look so many different ways. We don't have to follow a strict script. We don't necessarily have to have this set in stone curriculum. We can think about how can I leverage or tap into my child's deep areas of interest, which a lot of our neurodevelopment kids really have quirky or very intense focuses. Minecraft, you mentioned earlier, could be. You could design a whole school around Minecraft, right? So many do. Yeah. So I think that that first thing that parents would really want to do is start to, like, unpack their own ideas about what homeschooling means, what they think education has to look like, and then start to question that and start to think, okay, where can we get more creative? What could we design? If we could make the perfect school for our child at home, what would it actually look like? How would it feel like for our family? How would it feel like for me as a homeschooling parent? And start from there.

Wow. And I always hesitate to kind of give parents an example because there can be that temptation to copy what someone else does, even though it might not be the right fit for your child. But could you maybe take us through an example of what a day could be like for perhaps a child who maybe has been aggressive and violent at school and having a lot of outbursts and meltdowns and what kind of a nurturing environment could look like while homeschooling, perhaps for a six or seven year old, since a lot of our kiddos.

Are that age, what you would want to think about is how can we design this school together, even with a six or a seven year old, Especially with a child who has demand avoidance or so many neurodivergent kids. All humans want to have a sense of control. Right. And for a child who struggles more with demands being placed on them, unpredictability, all of those things can be very triggering for them and really kind of spike their nervous system. So if you even start with, this is our school, what would we. What would our school look like on our terms? What would be the most fun day? What would be something you want to learn the most about? And it might be Minecraft. But I think collaborating would be what you'd want to start with before you even design what your day is like. But you could start with, I'm happy to kind of walk you through what I did with my.

Sure, why not? Yeah, I would love to hear it. Yeah.

We started right after my child turned nine. But what we really found was we would start the day with like a morning meeting, which would be like having breakfast together and talking about things. We'd watch some fun videos. You know, there's so many like really cool animated like science YouTube channels or things. So we would kind of dive into something. I was always collecting interesting, like, articles that I knew my kid would be interested in, like, oh my gosh, this interactive sand sculpture. Look at what this like sculptor does all over the world. And we'd watch a video and talk about it. So I would always try to find ways to spark interesting conversations about creativity. I also would always have like some games or like, I print. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it wasn't. I was just always collecting like, oh, my kid would like that. Oh, this could be cool. So I was always just trying to.

Introduce your antenna out.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I would print out, you know, I don't even remember Ken. Ken puzzles or different puzzles. So I would have those in the room, like when we came into our little quote unquote classroom and like do some puzzles together. And then I actually made a little kind of index card for maybe 25 different topics. Right. Drop. Drop everything and read. So reading time, gaming time, watching a YouTube something, doing a science experiment, going for a walk. Like I had all of these things and then we'd kind of set out the cards and be like, what do you think? Feels like a good day. And. And my child could kind of pick those. And then we'd say, what, what order should we do these in? What should we do for? So we would just kind of talk through and we would co design the day together. And so it could look different every day. And that way if you have a day where it's just not working right, you can be like, you know what? This is like a chill mental health day. Let's get in pajamas and let's get cozy on the couch and let's do something else. So I think I was always willing to go with the flow and not push my agenda and really kind of read the energetic room of what was going on with my kid and their nervous system. So. But I think that designing it together and then like building the day from, from. And sometimes we did have to, like, by lunchtime we're like, oh, this plan's not working so well, let's try something else. And we'd have to reset. But I think going in with that flexibility, flexible mindset and then having lots of different options and then knowing that if Even if you made a plan, if your child has really gotten into something, that's a great thing about homeschooling, you don't have to say, okay, time to move on to the next subject. You're really into that. Why don't you, do you want to just spend the rest of the day doing that? Because like, it seems like you're really enjoying it. So cool. And then just kind of go with it. So I think having that kind of mindset that we can have this overarching agenda, but the agenda isn't about ticking things off our subject list. It's about, is my child engaged? You know, did they grow their love of learning? Do they? Was there an opportunity to learn something about themselves? And is this still working? That's kind of what we would do like every day.

Yeah, absolutely. And I love how you reframed the way you thought about learning and about school and you somehow found the way to put trust in your child to co design this experience with you and look for learning in a more fluid way. There's so many ways that children can learn throughout the day because I think a lot of parents come with great fear about learning exactly what's covered in school. And it's really great to have examples of parents like you have supported learning in a more self directed way and had an amazing success through that. And also, what also strikes me is that you've kind of loosened your relationship to time on this topic of parents. I think that sometimes when parents decide to homeschool their child, especially if that child has been challenging, they've kind of resigned themselves to not take care of themselves. Like, I guess I'm going to be a martyr and just focus all my time on my child, even if it doesn't feel great to me. And I would love to hear your suggestions for how a parent might balance work and homeschool. Many parents can kind of feel frustrated when they see responses like, I'm a working parent and I make it work so you can too. But not really understanding the ins and outs. And you know, I mean, some things I've heard from parents are, well, what about my child having outbursts when I'm trying to work? Or you know, oh my gosh, I have to spend so much time in appointments or therapy or I work remotely from the 6am to 2pm and I can't take them to activities until after that. And how are they supposed to keep themselves entertained? Or you know, I'm in debt and you know, I just moved to this town. I only have My partner or I'm a single mom. I mean there are these real and then there's a lot of fear of going off the schedule, especially around children on the spectrum. So I'm curious how you made that work for yourself and how you've supported some of the parents you work with in balancing their working life, their career, their self care and homeschooling, their differently wired child.

Yeah, I mean those are all big considerations. And I also want to reiterate that I know that depending on the family makeup, the, the work status, the economic status, it can be really challenging to make this work. I talked with families who have, who have brought in an external teacher to handle that so that the parent could still be working at home. And they were home in case something happened, but they had this other person who was in charge of kind of managing the day to day. I know some parents do like co op things where their kids would go to other classes so they would get little work breaks. I would say for me, I, I really, I think having a more loosely designed curriculum helped because I could build in like co working time. So I personally I've been self employed since 2003 so I, that's just, I've been able to kind of work when I need to work and so often it would be evenings and weekends and things like that. But also I, as a way of self care, I really like a good like mocha or something. Right. So like I would you know, be like let's go work at, you know, when we were in Amsterdam, I'm like let's go to Dignita and get a hot. You bring your project, I'll bring my work, you can have a hot chocolate, I'll have a mocha and we'll cowork for a while. And I had a kid who was happy to do that many days. So I, that was like self care for me and it was work time for me. My kid was happy. So I, first of all, sorry, I'm jumping ahead of myself. I want to say that it also took us a long time to design this and make it work. It wasn't like we made the switch and like wow, this is great. Why don't we do this? Years ago we had to figure it out. Yeah, no, we had to figure it out and I had to really let go of those things, those ideas. You said I had a good relationship with time. I had to do a lot of work to get comfortable with all of that. But so I would always try to like squeeze in, you know, if My child was immersed in a project. Okay, that's work time for me. I also, my husband, who, you know, worked out of the house, would, was a substitute teacher for me, like one day a month. And even that one day a month was so nice for me to be able to just have a day where I could like just leave the apartment and be on my own for the whole day. I would. So I tried to, when I could, or when he'd get home, I'd be like, okay, I need to get out for a walk. Like, I really had to be proactive about making sure that I was taking care of myself. I also love nature. That's very calming for me. So when we started homeschooling, my child was not really into hikes and things, but somehow over the course of the years that we, we were homeschooling together, that love of being in nature grew. And so I would build in. It's field trip day. We're gonna go, we're gonna bike to this park and we're gonna have a picnic and we're gonna do this. And so I planned in things that I, that felt like, that I knew were good for my child as well. And so, yeah, just kind of making sure that my needs were being met in that dynamic. I just want to touch upon too, the having a child who can be really intense or explosive or just, you know, that's really hard. And so part of that is having a, having a plan, like proactively planning for those things. Like what it, what am I going to do if things go off the rails? How am I going to take care of myself? And you do this as a parent any way. It's just when you're homeschooling, the stakes feel higher and you might feel like you, you can't leave, you know, you don't, you can't get that break.

There's nowhere to turn.

Yeah. So I think having a, like an emergency plan or plan for yourself when that happens, how am I going to take care of myself? How am I going to support my child? And how are, how are we going to co regulate, how am I going to help kind of bring things down in the room? And there's lots of ways to do that. You can, like, I made little mental health passes or like I made designs so that if things really went off the rails, one of us could like turn it in and be like, okay, this is, we need this now. So like, you can do, make, you can gamify, like just getting creative. There are, there are no rules. That's the great thing about homeschooling. So if you need to be like, you know what? This is a disaster today. And my kid is dysregulating, My kid's explosive. I need to take care of myself. We need to get to a different place. Just being like nothing else matters but getting back to calm. And so having kind of your plan in advance for what are the things I can do to get back to calm. And then for better or worse, we often get a lot of practice with those things. So over time, it gets easier and easier. I don't know if easy is the right word, but we're better able to tap into those strategies when everything kind of goes off the rails.

Right. And I guess that's part of the benefit of homeschooling, is that you have the time to see what are the projects that are going to really immerse my child, and taking the time to figure out what those are so that when you have a work meeting, that's the project or one of the projects that can go into place, and then, you know, reading books, articles, taking one of your online courses, and understanding how to cope with the explosions, both for yourself and for your child, that's really great. And I would also just kind of add that you can also talk to the people you work for. And I think a lot of parents don't realize that companies, good companies, want to have parents employed with them. And if your child is struggling and. And might explode during a meeting, you can work with your employer to see if there are ways that you can navigate that together.

Yeah, I absolutely encourage parents to be transparent about what's going on because. And again, I think whether you're homeschooling schooling or not, we often need to do that because we might be in the middle of the day getting a phone call to pick up our kid from school or something. So it is important that. That a manager or someone is supportive of the realities of what life is like when you're raising a neurodivergent child who's going through a rough patch, just.

To kind of dig in a little deeper too. And maybe I'm not even using the right term explosions or I don't know if there's a kinder or better way to talk about when this happens. But if a family is struggling with that, whether their child is in school or homeschooling, are there any particular resources you would recommend, either a book or maybe a course on your website just to get started navigating that better.

Yeah, I mean, I am a big fan of Dr. Ross Green.

Do you.

Are you familiar with Dr. Green? He wrote the book, wonderful book called the Explosive Child.

Okay, yes, I am familiar with that book.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that is a phenomenal book. And he has a strategy or an approach called the collaborative and proactive solutions model. And kind of the short part of that is plan B, and that is Dr. Green's work is all about recognizing that no child wants to be dysregulated and explosive. And that if that happens, it's because, first of all, the nervous systems are overloaded, right. And they don't have the skills to do anything different yet. And so rather than, you know, focusing on the big disruptive behavior or the explosions and trying to just work on those, he walks parents through a process of identifying the underlying lagging skill or that or the underlying. He calls them the unsolved problems. So we really, it's. And Mona de la Hook, Dr. Mona Jella Hook, who wrote Brain Body Parenting, also talks about this and has worked with Dr. Green and Stephen Porges and polyvagal theory. But like, if you think of that iceberg theory, looking at what's beneath the surface, so the external behavior, the explosion, is what we see. But there's all of these underlying reasons. And so what we want to do is identify what's really going on with this child that is resulting in this explosion. And how can we start to build up skills and capacity to support that? The challenge, which I will just say is that it's not a quick fix. It is. It takes a long time. And to support a child and really understanding their own triggers, it's. It can be a lifelong journey for so many of us. So. But I think when we as parents and caregivers reframe and realize that no child wants to be dysregulated, no child wants to lose is. It's a horrible way to feel. And when we can do our own, reframe and think, okay, this child is super dysregulated, and what do they need right now? If we can work on doing our own work to co regulate. So if we can calm our bodies. Dr. Dan Siegel talks about the mirror neurons, Right. If we can calm our own bodies, that can help bring our child's nervous system down. So. So the ways that we're going to support our child aren't necessarily going to quickly. Well, not necessarily. They're not going to quickly diffuse a child who is easily dysregulated, but we can work on building those skills so that our child can get to calm more quickly and start to develop, you know, the ability to navigate those uncomfortable emotions.

It sounds like such a useful resource for parents because I think people who are into the idea of positive parenting understand intellectually that there's a need or a trigger underlying that kind of behavior. But it can be very difficult to identify what that is. So it's so great to have a system. And then additionally, you know, it doesn't happen at convenient times. It happens when you're, you know, with your whole family at Christmas. It happens out when you're at a restaurant, when you're trying to take your kid to work. And, and so just even in any, in the height of the moment, trying to find your own inner calm is so valuable. And I guess along those lines, I mean, as someone who has parents I deeply love and care about and want to support, I sometimes feel frustrated that a parent isn't willing to take the steps for their own self care. They're willing to take their child to a psychiatrist and get therapy, but you know, everybody knows they're the one that really needs the support. And I wonder how, as a coach yourself, how do you navigate that when you find a parent is having a lot of resistance to their own self care and regulation?

We have to take care of ourselves. I, I mean it's something I talk about all the time is this idea of self care which I, you know, and sometimes I'll be talking with a group of parents and I'll use the word self care or I like conscious maintenance. Doesn't have as much kind of like.

A mechanic working on my heart strings or something.

But you know, when I start talking about this, I, you know, invariably there'll be, parents are like, I don't have time to do that. Like if I would, I could, you know, I would if I could, but I can't. And then there are parents who instantly, yeah, who instantly get sad because they recognize, yeah, I'm not and I'm not going to make it. And that is the truth, that we are not going to make it if we're not taking care of ourselves. I just interviewed Heather Chauvin for my podcast. She wrote a book called Dying to be a Good Mother Mother and she was diagnosed with stage four cancer in 2013. And she has three kids all differently wired and was putting everything into them. And she, it took such a wake up call for her to recognize that she was like putting everybody else first instead of herself. And that's what we're doing to ourselves. And also we cannot show up for our kids if we have no reserves, if we're running on fumes, there's no way that we can support their nervous systems, that we can support their growth if we are, if we are empty, if we're running on empty. Also, we're not modeling how to take care of ourselves, right? We're showing our kids that we should sacrifice for everybody else. And that is not a message we want our kids to grow up with. So, I mean, I could talk for hours about this, but what I will just say in terms of self care, I define it as something that is intentional and just for you. So those are the only two criteria. So an example could be what I did last. Give you a little window into my life. Last weekend I, maybe two weekends ago, my husband was out, I think my kid was still asleep. And I was like, I love to clean the kitchen and just like stay in pajamas most of the morning and on Saturday mornings and I was like, oh, I need some music. So I put on Janis Joplin and Me and Bobby McGee, if anybody knows that song, I put it on and I, by the end, I was so out of breath because I was jumping around like a complete fool. Like, I blasted that music. I just, it was the biggest, like, physical release. It was better that I'm a runner. I was, it was a better workout than a run anyway. That was like four minutes. That is self care. It was just for me. I did it intentionally because I knew it was going to make me feel good, it was going to help me release stuff. So self care doesn't have to cost money. Self care doesn't have to take a lot of time. It is simply the act of choosing yourself and doing something intentionally that, you know, feels good. Music is a tremendous way to access positive emotions. So I encourage parents to do at least one thing every day to make sure. And you know, I, I even have like a little check sheet somewhere on my website. It's like where you write down what are the things that I know pump me up, right? For me, that song will do it every time. So if I recognize, well, I haven't done anything for myself, I could look at that list and say, okay, today I need to get out for a 15 minute walk while listening to a podcast at two times the speed. That to me is self care or whatever it is. So. But we need to be conscious about it or it's not going to happen.

Kind of to go back to be. To being the person who wants the other person to do the self care. I Mean, I think about for example, the husband in a relationship. I know where the child is differently wired and his wife is just, you know, going off the deep end. She's just really just so anxious and everybody in the family is saying, you know, you need support, but for some reason she lacks the will to do that. And you know, I think the husband feels invested because he also wants his child to experience that healing. I mean, it seems a little bit like kind of being an al anon member or something where you want to like force the other person to heal themselves. And you know, I tend to like send people books and stuff like that. But I don't know, I guess ultimately I would think it's about being loving and connected and that's what really supports self care. But I would be curious to hear if you see that as well and you know, what your thoughts on being, being the partner of the person who's overly stressed and not caring for themselves.

Yeah, I mean, I think we want to. I mean when you're part, when you're parenting, co parenting with someone with a child who can be more intense, it is so important that we kind of have each other's back and that we're compassionate to the other person's experience. And sometimes it changes from day to day. Who needs what? Sometimes one parent needs more support. So if you're in a space and your partner is having a hard time kind of insisting, you know, maybe stepping up and taking on more of that emotional labor or physical labor in that for that day or that week, like you're having a hard time. I want to do this here. I'd like you to, you know, why don't you get out, why don't you have a coffee with a friend, you know, like. But sometimes that means us, you know, taking on more and then sometimes the situation's completely reversed and we, if we're the ones who are feeling really low, having an open enough relationship and dialogue with our partner that we can say I'm not doing well, I can. You do, you know, so asking for what we need. And so, and I think it's really important that parents are communicating openly always and maybe doing regular daily check ins even. That's what I was doing when I was homeschooling. I had to have time to touch base and with Darren so that he knew what had happened at school, how I was feeling, how my kid was doing, what I needed. And then I needed to hear about his day too. But I thought my stuff was more important, of course. But anyway, so I, but I think establishing that where we're just regularly checking in so we can kind of see what the other one needs and then stepping up when our partner is, is feeling low and asking for what we need when we're having a hard time.

These are all just such great points. The checking in, the daily check ins and the acts of service. Seeing those windows when you can provide your partner with the self care and really bring it back to what do you value which is the child's health and well being and knowing that your emotional regulation is the first step before you can actually support the child and their emotional regulation.

It's everything. I think that's an exciting thing that's happening in this space. You know, more and more people are understanding CO regulation, emotional regulation, nervous system regulation, all of those things. And that's very exciting to me because it's so powerful. I think it's more like understanding the way that our emotions can impact other people or our energy can influence other people around us and that, that can be such a superpower, that can be so much more powerful than any strategy we're trying to implement in our homes.

Right. I mean, I remember way many years ago when I started just doing five minutes of meditation a day and how everybody in my life started to transform around me. It was almost magical. And what a gift that having a child who's differently wired can make us see how important that self care is. So yeah. And so in the beginning of our conversation you were sharing a bit about how you went about finding your child's interests and the projects they like to do. One of the most common questions I get from parents whose children have autism is what if my child doesn't want to learn? They feel like they're missing the mark on getting their child to love learning. You know, the parent, I want my child to love learning. So maybe, you know, at the best case they'll comply and sit down for their lesson. But nothing seems to get absorbed or they just don't really seem to be into it or enjoy it or in a more challenging case, it's a huge fight and a constant battle to focus on anything for more than 10 minutes. I often hear parents who say, I've tried everything. Two public schools, two private schools, three online platforms, multiple homeschooling curriculum, nothing works our families in, you know, and there's also trauma that can happen in school. You know, my child used to love reading. Now they don't want to read ever again and get mad every time we even talk about reading. You know, Some parents say, well, they will engage as long as we don't call it schoolwork. So when you see this question, you know, my child hates learning, my child doesn't want to learn. What, what do you generally think is behind that question and what are the ways to address it that you have found to be most helpful?

Another great question, and I took a bunch of notes as you were asking that. I think first of all, we need to recognize that if we're pulling our child out of school or they've been asked to leave a school and we find ourselves homeschooling, most likely they have experienced trauma at school. Most neurodivergent kids leave school with some kind of trauma. Whether it's shaming, you know, it could be seclusion, like it could look so many different ways just being a kid who's otherized all the time and treated differently by peers. So that is real. And so I think it can be really important for, if you're in that situation to just realize, my kid needs to detox from school. My kid needs as long as it takes for them to get back to a place of felt safety because they didn't feel safe in school. And so if you can. We get so concerned about our kids falling behind and they have to know this by this age and what if this. And we start to kind of spiral and uncertainty. But a child who is in fight or flight mode is not going to learn anything. And trying to force them to learn something is going to trigger them even more so. But when a child is feeling safe and secure, then they're going to be so much more available and they can learn things so quickly if they, if they're interested. Right? So, so there's two pieces to this. One of it, one of the pieces is us as the parents and caregivers dealing with our own fears and anxieties about what it means that we're homeschooling our child. And what does it mean if my child is on their iPad every day for eight hours and that's what we're calling school, what am I screwing up my kid? Like, what does that mean? You know, so we need to do our own work and really challenge that fear based thinking that we have going on and then really respecting that our child might need a big detox. They may need, they might be, if they're autistic, they might be experiencing some autistic burnout where any kind of demand is going to completely shut them down. So helping our kids feel safe and whatever that looks like is really Critical. And then I also would introduce the idea of unschooling. Right? So unschooling can work really great and you don't have to, you don't have to use the word learning. Unschooling is completely child led and it's really letting your child, you know, even the child who doesn't want to learn, you said at the beginning, who doesn't? They don't want to focus on anything. They don't, you know, there's something they like to do. It might be a video game, it might be, you know, musical, it might be create. Who knows what it is, but there's light. It might be Legos, I don't know. But there's something that they like to do. And so when you're unschooling, you're letting them do that thing and do it and that becomes their thing. And then you, as a homeschooling parent, look for opportunities to teach some of those underlying skills to. And not all the things, but you know, for example, executive function stuff, right? Like most neurodivergent kids have some lagging executive function skills. If your child is like really into Minecraft and they're spending eight hours a day or more on Minecraft and doing builds, you know, what a great way to like come up with a plan. Do you want to make a map? Can you show me what you're doing? What's your plan for building this? Getting them to talk through their vision. Would it be help, you know, like, we can get so creative and how we kind of use their interest as a way to learn all kinds of things. It doesn't mean we're going to be. You have to learn math and English and all of the things through Minecraft. But there's so much that can be learned. And when our. Yeah, and when our kids are ready and more available, we can start to build other things in there. But if you have a child who is, who has experienced trauma and is really resistant, we can't make them care, we can't make them be motivated. All we can do is help them feel safer and more calm so they can be more available. Help them explore things that make them feel excited or joyful or competent and start from there.

I just love how you describe that because I think that a lot of parents are fearful of trying unschooling. They've heard about it, but they're not really sure it would work for their child. And you bring up such a good point that if you're in a state of trauma, you can't really learn a lot of things. And if you can trust this wide expanse of time of life that your child has to learn and trust that their need to know will bring them somewhere and that there are things that are interested in, you can really go so far. It's extraordinary.

Wow.

And I guess, I mean, on that point, I wonder what you would say to a parent who says, my child really needs a schedule. I hear this a lot, like, okay, unschooling might work for some autistic children, but my child needs a schedule. And of course we can't really talk this through with that individual parent right now. And I do trust parents instincts. But do you ever think that this need for a schedule is misguided or is that really something that some kids just have to. Have to thrive?

I think some children definitely do better when they know exactly what's going to happen and when. And that's why I think that co designing is so powerful. So if you, you know, design what do you know, you could sit down and say, what do we want our week to look like? Do we, you know, and just get like, do we want Mondays to be art day? Do we want Tuesday? You know, and, and it's gonna always evolve. You might come up with the best schedule and then like, you rev, you revisit the schedule weekly. Is this still working? Should we make some changes? What do you think? This turned out really well. Should we expand that to two day? You know, we can get really creative about that. But I think looping our kids in so that they have agency over it and, and then just always being curious. But for us, you know, we, we designed a weekly schedule. And then with every passing year, we kind of got more complex in the offerings that were available. I think by the last year also my calendars got more complex. I had like a, I had a board where I had Velcro on it. And I, we had all. We decided this together that there would be all these like slots, right. So at different classes. And so then I made these little. And they were color coded. It was a whole thing. But I made these things that also had Velcro. And so every morning at our morning meeting, my child could like grab it and like stick he arrange, you know, where I wanted to be. And then throughout the day, oh, let's take this down and let's add this up. So it was a very fluid thing, but we still had the schedule as a starting point. And so I think just following your child's lead there and because sometimes we think they need A schedule, and maybe they don't. And sometimes they really do. So let's create it with them.

That's beautiful. And I think I heard you even say this on a podcast, that homeschooling is a lot like building a company in that you don't have everything set in stone the first day. You're not going to build a successful company if you just map everything out and it never changes. A successful company is one that evolves, and often you start very simple and you start layering on things and maybe you do a terrible job in the beginning, and that's how you learn. And it evolves into something that's so intricate and complex, you never could have thought of it in the beginning. So that's. That's beautiful. And I really love this morning meeting. I think it's something everybody should do if they can, is find that family touch point every day. It's really so helpful.

Yeah. And with the morning meeting, too, I. And especially, like, when there's like school breaks or holidays or travel or. Or everything really is disruptive, I think it could be helpful have your morning meeting for what's happening that day, but always touch base on what else is happening for the rest of the week so that you're reinforcing that. So you're kind of reducing this idea of unpredictability ability that, like, two days later. I didn't know that was happening today. But if we go over the whole week, every morning, then we're, oh, yeah, remember, Thursday we're going to the dentist. Then on Tuesday morning, and don't forget Thursday we're going to the dentist. And on Wednesday morning, oh, tomorrow's your dentist appointment. So you're just helping your child kind of, you know, plan for what's coming up and you can head off. Hopefully some of those kind of unexpected. I didn't know this was happening. For kids who like to know all.

The things and along the lines of this topic of kind of just co designing the education with your child, how would you support a child who might be emotionally reluctant to move from school to homeschool? Perhaps they're really not thriving socially or emotionally there. The parents can tell, it's clear. Or maybe they just aren't allowed to go back. But the child might just really not want to homeschool. Sometimes it's the opposite. How can you. How can we support parents through this transition?

Yeah, I think. I think it depends on the age of the child. So with an older child, you know, I've talked to a lot of parents who really want to homeschool. And they're. Or maybe they have homeschooled. And the parent, the child has said, I want to go back to school next year. And the parent's like, oh, no, this is not a good plan. But their child's really insistent on doing it. And so depending on the age of the child, then you plan it together and say, okay, I, I think we have to. When we can follow our child's lead, that's. And, and say, okay, let's find the right school together. Or what's our plan gonna be if things start to fall apart? As much as you can, proactively planning for different scenarios so that you kind of know how you're going to handle things. What are the things you're going to look out for if things start to go bad. So that's. If your child really is ins going back to school after homeschooling with a younger child who really wants to go to school. And the parent either they can't go back to school or I think it's just really important to, to just kind of at some point say, this is what we have decided is best for our family right now. We're going to always be making sure it's the right thing. Would you be willing to try it? Let's design it together. Let's give this a shot for this amount of time, and let's keep checking in. And I would also really want to know what the child's biggest concerns are, because they likely have a list of concerns if they're going to be homeschooled. So taking those really seriously, like, I, you know, and maybe if they don't tell you, maybe they would tell a therapist or someone else they work with, but, like, really get all of their worries and concerns down on paper and then being like, okay, I hear that those are some really valid concerns, and I can understand why this just doesn't feel great for you. So let's come up with some plans to help around some of those concerns. And then you could use that same collaborative, proactive solutions model that Dr. Ross Green talks about. But come up with some ways to address those concerns before you even get there, because there might be a lot of things they're making it mean in their minds about homeschooling that are unfounded or very valid. And so we want to address those with our kids ahead of time.

Fantastic. I mean, just giving them the benefit of the doubt and finding out what the concerns are. So helpful. So do you have any.

What are.

What are Your favorite curricula for children on the autism spectrum. I know. I mean there's so many different children and some are very hands on learners and others thrive with websites and apps. Do you have any particular favorites you would like to recommend to families?

I would say, I mean there's so many more now than when I was homeschooling, but which is really exciting. I, I really like outschools resources. I think they offer wonderful classes and they really get. They have a number of things just for neurodivergent kids. They really support the social piece, which can be hard if you're doing online curriculum. We have done classes with next level homeschool which also I thought the quality of, you know, for kids who like to nerd out on things, they have like a whole marine biology series. That's phenomenal. So those are, those are the two that I recommend. There's also a newer one for especially for Twice Exceptional kids, which for listeners who aren't familiar, Twice Exceptional is someone who's gifted and has one or more learning disability disabilities. So gifted and autistic gifted, ADHD gifted, dyslexia gifted and all of the above. And so they're really complex kids. And Sam Young founded something called Young Scholars Academy, which is fantastic. And it's really centered around creating opportunities for kids with deep areas of interest who often feel like they don't fit in anywhere to find their people and to make meaningful connections through learning together. And it's also all virtual. So I think there are a lot of really great online opportunities which is really exciting.

Awesome. Those are so helpful and we'll definitely include links to all of those in the show notes. But it's such a wonderful thing to observe that there are so many great resources emerging to support these learners that just weren't there before. Do you have any recommendations for resources to support social skills? And in particular, concerns I've heard from parents are just how do you teach your child to interact socially? For example, their voice volume, how to listen, how to act when things don't go your way, how to deal with bullies. Maybe even those bullies are your siblings or cousins. Just even anything around how to identify and process emotions, dealing with depression and anxiety. Maybe you're waiting for a therapist and you want to start dealing with that first. Or you know, something for a child who's overly trusting and will just make friends with any stranger on the street and walk off with them. Are there any books or curricula or techniques you'd recommend with the social stuff?

It is really complicated because there are a lot of social skills groups that people sign their kids up for, and they can be really helpful. And also some of them are really about kind of. I. I use the word training. I don't think that's too strong of a word about really training autistic or otherwise neurodivergent kids to. To look less neurodivergent or to show up in a way that's less neurodivergent and, you know, or to mask, which is when you're kind of covering up who you are so that you appear more, quote, unquote, normal. So I just want to throw that out there, that I think, you know, social skills groups are something a lot of parents get steered in that direction. I think they can be great. And I would just kind of put that out there too. What we want to do is help kids understand how they feel in certain situations and make choices that keep them safe and that also feel authentic to them as opposed to showing them this is the way you need to act in this situation. So just putting that out there. What I really like to do, I mean, there are some good books. There's a book called Social Detectives, which is really a diary of a social detective. It's called. And that is these stories where you're kind of following a neurodivergent kid who's in different environments. But it's really designed to analyze and get really curious about what's going on in this dynamic and who's. What does this mean? And what do you think this person's feeling? So I think there are. That's a good book. And there are some other books like that. There is the Asper Kids Book of Social Rules, I think it's called. It's by Jennifer Cook. That's another good book. So there are some good resources out there that we can do with our kids. What I like doing is like, watching television shows. Like we used to watch Project Runway together, right? Great show.

I remember that show.

So good. But what a great opportunity. Or Amazing Race. What a great opportunity to, like, hit the pause button. What do you think? Oh, my gosh. What. What happened there? He looks really upset. What do you think is going on? So I think we can use things we're watching on tv, things we're doing together as. As like getting curious about what's really going on to help our kids better understand. And it's good for all kids, right? You know, empathy, other people's experiences, perspectives. How would you act if that happened to you? Oh, my Gosh, I would have flipped my lid or I would have done this. So I think it's just ongoing. Is helping our kids, you know, kind of learn those things and get curious about it. And then the last thing I'll say is it's really important to. That our kids get to hang out with their neurodivergent peers. And so there are certain. You know, I was just on a listserv this morning and about some. One parent with a teen and my teen has no friends and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh, if you go to this game, the Brooklyn Game Strategist, then you know, yeah, right. You're doing Dungeons and Dragons or Magic, the kids Gathering. You know, there are certain things and not every neurodivergent kid is into those things, but there are some. Many are. There are certain activities or interests that tend to pull kids who. Who experience the world in a similar way. So whether it's in person or it's online through Outschool or Young Scholars Academy, like finding opportunities for our kids to be with peers who. Who get them where they can really just show up and be accepted and seen and not have to mask. That is one of the most valuable things.

That's wonderful. And also just this idea of connecting around an activity I think is really powerful. I used to be an actress and we. We. One of the active. One of the exercises we would do is. Is an activity like you would be knitting and you would do a scene. And it's like a really foundational part of Meisner. And I think that what it does is it takes your focus off yourself or off the other person and onto this external thing. In the same way, when you're playing a board game together, you're connecting around your interest rather than saying like, oh, I like her hair. I don't like his hair. The way he. His face doesn't show expression. That's strange. The tone of voice is odd. He doesn't talk. You're focusing on enjoying this activity together. And it's funny because I've done a ton of research on how to homeschooling community and one of the tips I see come up the most often is starting a board game night, just a night, once a week. And I think that activity just somehow really lends itself to introverted and extroverted people. People are more comfortable talking or less talking and. Yeah, so board games are great.

Yes. And they can be tricky for some neurodivergent kids who. Who struggle with the unpredictability or, you know, Games of chance or the competition can be really dysregulating for them. But yeah, I think if you can. I love that idea of like doing it an activity as a way to kind of keep, especially like a kid with ADHD who needs to be like moving or fidgeting to, to be able to focus on something. So giving them their body, something to do so that they can kind of really show up is a great idea.

Wonderful. And it all starts with taking that time to discover their interests and what environments they thrive in. So getting an autism diagnosis can feel so overwhelming to a parent. What words of encouragement and maybe even concrete resources would you recommend to get started when you first get that diagnosis?

I have a resource that I love and it's. It's a book called I Will Die on this Hill and it is by Megan Ashburn and Jules Edwards. And they are both parents raising autistic kids. One, Jules is autistic herself and they co wrote this book and it's just amazing. And one of the things they talk about in the book is taking an autism moon. So like you to go on a honeymoon after you get married, they say go on an autism moon after you get an identification that your child is autistic. Autistic. And they say just take a year, take a year to, to sit with it, to do your own work, to understand what am I making this mean? How can I support myself so I can really show up for who my child is and not awful eyes or catastrophize or like, you know, rush ahead from a place of fear, which is what so many parents do. Usually when a parent's child is identified as autistic, you, you, you're given like a list. Start this therapy, do this, do you know, all these interventions. And it can be really overwhelming. And because parents often are really freaked out and afraid, they start doing all the things and it's not always a great idea. They might be interventions that are completely out of alignment or don't feel right for the family because they might be more focused on behaviorism and not really respecting a kid's neurodivergence and what they need to be successful. So taking a pause is I think the best thing you can do. Acknowledging this isn't what I expected. This is, I'm feeling scared, I'm feeling overwhelmed. Getting support for yourself to work through those fears and those concerns that you have, giving yourself the time to research therapists and providers and all of these suggestions and then making a really good decision so that when you move forward you feel this is right for our family. This feels really good. I don't feel like I'm being pressured. I feel like we're being respected and we're in choice about how to support our child. So I love that idea of the autism moon. And I think that that book would be a great book for anyone who's new to this journey.

Wonderful. It gives you that space to respond instead of react. And it did remind me of something else I wanted to ask you, which is about ABA therapy. And I know there's been a lot of controversy around that therapy and some parents, especially those who have autism themselves, who see it as a type of abuse. I would love to hear your take on it.

I mean, I'm not an autistic adult, and I really try to follow the lead. The people I learned from are autistic adults who are very active in kind of. Dr. Devin Price is one of those people, like autistic adults, who are kind of leading the way in terms of being very vocal, what masking is. Many of whom overwhelmingly say that ABA has been traumatic or is harmful because it is about masking. Right. It's about, it's focusing on those external behaviors so that someone can, can from an, a neurotypical point of view, thrive in a neurotypical world. And so I know lots of, I'm talking around this because I don't, I can't say yes or no because it's not my decision. I've talked with parents, you know, bipoc parents, parents raising black autistic kids who, who have a very different perspective on aba because for a child who is, is black or a child who is from an ethnic marginalized group, their external behavior may be responded to very differently than a white neurodivergent kid. Right. And so there I've talked to many black moms who feel like I need to, my child needs to learn how to appear more normal for their own sake. They're in danger. Yeah. So I, I can't come out and say this is, this is right because there's no right thing for anyone.

Right or wrong.

Right. There's no right or wrong. I think I, I, I try to listen and learn from people who have experience. I think it's important for parents. And I know also that a lot of people say that ABA is different and there are different ways of being aba and some aren't so behavior focused and they're more relationship based. I'm a fan bir Floor Time, which was founded by Stanley Greenspan, and that is A relationship based, play based therapy that it's not covered by insurance and which is an aba, is the only therapy in the US that is kind of, kind of considered the gold standard for autistic kids. So it's a financial issue. Yeah. But I would say what we don't want to do is give children who are autistic the message that the way that they process anxiety, experience the world is wrong and that they shouldn't do that. And so they need to kind of COVID it up, which can be harmful for them in order to be in a normal world that I reject. I think that that can, that can be. And we've heard from so many autistic adults that can be really harmful.

Right. I mean, you just say that so clearly. And ultimately it's about, I think, helping a child learn to navigate their world with kindness and success to get the success they want in life and also do no harm to others. And you know, masking is kind of, you know, saying you're, there's something wrong with you, you need to act different. And as we know, they're just so many autistic adults who have changed our world. The list goes on in Temple Grandin. And you know, and so I think that's, that's a really useful framework and knowing, I mean, within any method there are good practitioners and people who, their intentions are not as good. And is there anything we haven't touched upon today that you'd like to add?

I just want to say one other thing that I really loved about the book I mentioned, I Will Die on this Hill is they talk about the goal that we have for our kids. We. Because I hear, as you were asking that question, so many parents I hear, and you probably hear this too, but my child will need to know how to do acts if they're going to be independent. Do you know all of these things? And one of the things that the authors of I Will Die on this Hill emphasize is that independence, nobody's independent. We all have support in our lives. And so what we want rather than independence for our kids is self determination. And that is a really important reframe. Like yeah, we, we all want to feel like we get to have agency over our lives. And so when again, when we can zoom out and focus on that, that is going to influence all the things that we do along the way and where we're going to prioritize and put our energy. So I just wanted to share that.

That is such an extraordinary reframing of that idea of independent versus self Determined. And the word self determination is within a network and a community and it's someone who knows how to use the resources available to them. And education isn't something that just stops at age 18. We're learning our whole lives and as we need to know, we can be inspired to learn more. I love that.

That.

So, Debbie, you have this incredible website, Tilt Parenting, with so many great resources. Your podcast is amazing. I was just listening to it on my morning walk the other day and it was really healing to. To me, your guest was talking about this idea of maybe and expanding your life to the maybes and getting over your addiction of certainty. It was really transformative. So any parent who is, you know, has questions about this topic really should just run and listen to all your podcast episodes. I think there's over 400. What, what other resources can they take advantage of that you offer? How. What's the best way to get started?

Well, thank you. Yes. And I love that conversation with Alison Carmen. I, I go back to it a lot because it's such a powerful concept as someone who's addicted to certainty and control. So tiltparenting.com is kind of the home for all of the resources. You can find all the podcasts there. You can learn more about my book, Differently Wired. I do have some kind of master classes. One on screen time. I did a few on mental health and NeuroDivergent Kids with Dr. Matt Zachresky that were fantastic. And then I have this membership community called the Differently Wired Club, which is where we kind of up level together. And it really is a true community that has seven live calls a month. We do live coaching and get expert guests and office hours and it's just a lovely. I kind of created what I needed and then other people showed up. So it was perfect for me.

Best way to start a company, best.

Way to do it. But I want to share that just this week as we're recording this, I launched a Tilt Parenting as an app and as a, a different online community. So you can, if you go to the App store in iOS or in Google Play, get to download the Till Parenting app. And there's a free pod club on there so you can learn. You can like dive into the episodes and have conversations. There are a couple free little challenges and then if you want to then join the membership club from there, you can do that. But so that's kind of a new thing I'm playing with right now.

Yay. I can't wait to try that out. Sounds fantastic. Well, you've done A really beautiful way, weaving in this idea of a passion for learning and how to cultivate that passion for learning in your child and give them the space to discover their interests and for you to discover their interests. And I like to end each episode by asking my guest, what is something you're passionate about learning right now? And I think the most fun answers are completely unrelated to what we're talking about. It could be something about yourself. It could be a fun fact. A book you're reading. What are you learning right now?

My gosh, that's good. I'm, like, baking. No, I.

Making an app. Yeah.

I mean, I am. I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to all that stuff. So I'm always like, I did my. I designed my website. I still mean, like, I do all of my online stuff myself because I nerd out on that. So I'm definitely in a learning curve with that because we're. We lived in the Netherlands for five and a half years, and we're planning to move back this summer. I'm going back into working on my Dutch, so that is a big focus of my learning right now. Because, yeah, if you're in the Netherlands, everyone speaks English, but I'm like, I'm not going to be one of those Americans who lives in another country and assumes people are talking English. I'm going all in. So that's where I'm at right now.

Wow. Can you say hello? How are you? In Dutch?

Yeah. Oh, I love it.

That's so great. Oh, my gosh, Debbie, I'm just so happy that we got to have this conversation and that your resources exist. I mean, it's just such a gift to families. And I know that this type of resource didn't even exist maybe 10 or 20 years ago. So it's just great for people to know there's a community that can support them and help them raise their amazing child and nurture the incredible contribution they are sure to make to the world. And I just really look forward to continuing to collaborate with you and supporting your work in whatever way I can. Thank you so much.