Navigating the Back-to-School Transition for Special Needs Families: Expert Tips and Personal Stories (Part 1 of 3) | Ep17

Ever wondered how to ease the back-to-school transition for your special needs child? Join us for part 1 of 3 of an enlightening conversation with Dr. Deanna Iverson and special guest, Shawna Fox, as they share their personal journeys and hard-earned wisdom. As both educators and parents of special needs children, Dr. D and Shawna dive into the common stressors parents face at the start of a new school year, from coordinating transportation and lunches to ensuring teachers are well-informed about their child's unique needs. Shawna even reveals her creative solution involving Tic Tacs, offering a fresh perspective on managing complex medical and psychological needs.

We'll also explore practical strategies for managing back-to-school stress, focusing on the power of effective communication with teachers and establishing structured schedules and routines. Learn how to create positive responses to anxiety, pick the right moments to address negative behaviors, and serve as a role model for stress management. We emphasize the importance of family traditions and daily routines to provide emotional stability. Tune in for actionable tips like adjusting sleep and food schedules, using music to manage time, and incorporating sensory cues into your child's daily routine. Whether you're a seasoned parent of a special needs child or new to the journey, this episode is packed with invaluable insights to help make the transition back to school smoother for everyone involved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Stressors of Going Back to School
• 9:02 Navigating Back-to-School Stress With Ease

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This program is made possible by friends and partners of the Special Parent Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:05

I believe that empowering parents of special needs children is like giving them the superpower of unconditional love and unbreakable determination. They are not just parents, they are true champions shaping a bright future for their incredible children. I'm Dr Deanna Iverson and I'm glad you're here. Welcome to the Special Parent Podcast. I'm Dr Deanna Iverson. The next three weeks, we are going to talk about going back to school. This is a conversation between Shauna Fox and me, both educators and special needs parents. We will discuss the typical and atypical stressors at the beginning of each new school year, providing you with unique solutions and tips to surviving the start of a school year. Thank you for watching and listening. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Special Parent Podcast. This is Dr Deanna Iverson, and I have a special guest with me here today, shawna Fox. Hello, we are tackling an important question today the question of does going back to school ever make you or your child feel stressed? Because I know it does for me. How about you?

Speaker 3: 1:13

Absolutely. It is like the Night of the Comet show from the 80s. It's something like that. We should just all hide in the shed and we'll be fine, but we have to come out the next day with everybody fully clothed and lunches packed.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Yeah and yeah, you've got to have your hair good, because picture day is going to be like the next day or something Right, getting ready for the IDs. That's always good.

Speaker 3: 1:35

Shauna, will you please introduce yourself both professionally and personally to our I don't do a lot of things professionally, but I do have a profession. Yes, I don't do a lot of things professionally, but I do have a profession. Yes, my name is Shawna Fox. I am a school teacher. I teach in a program that's primarily for students with emotional and social behavior difficulties. That's my profession. I've also been a youth pastor for 35 years, and because we were really open to kids of all abilities, we ended up becoming really specializing, as well as students with a higher level of needs. There. And then in my personal life, I like to say that I have seven children and six baby daddies. And then I wait for everybody to stop gasping and I say I also have six baby mamas. My husband and I have adopted six children internationally, and so they came with a sundry of different emotional and physical issues. So we have some autism in the house, some schizophrenia, some ADHD, some reactive attachment disorder.

Speaker 2: 2:44

It's just a party at all times Sounds like the perfect mix for a lovely, calming day.

Speaker 3: 2:51

Yes, that's exactly. Every day is calming around the Fox house.

Speaker 2: 2:56

Well, so today what we wanted to talk about, of course, was starting school, and your kids are now older. They're older children, and so you've walked this walk and I have kids that are deep in the walk, and so for me, it starts out like the stress of back to school starts with before school even starts, because I get these emails. Three kids, three different schools, which means I'm getting emails. I can't just have one email. Be universal and follow the directions three times Right.

Speaker 3: 3:24

And everything's different and you have to sort out how their transportation is going to work out, how their lunches are going to work out.

Speaker 3: 3:31

If teachers are aware of their needs and then each child will have a unique interaction with their environment. Some are very socially aware, so they don't want to disclose their obvious in any way that they've got an extra challenge. So you want to communicate that to staff without sounding like you're the helicopter mom that is really embedding this behavior. But to know that you know I know my child and I want you to know them as well. As a parent and as a teacher, I don't always know that school staff have taken the time to read the paperwork that's available, especially before the first day, especially before the first day, because I know that I try to skim, I do my best to read it, but it's still a lot and you know, each eligibility that we look at in the school setting carries such a different presentation per child. Right now my two nieces live with this as well and they face some really unique challenges their siblings but how their struggles present themselves is such a different picture for each kid.

Speaker 3: 4:46

So it is a lot. It is absolutely stressful and just that sense that I want to make sure that whoever is in that place, whoever I am dropping my precious little angel baby off to, is going to treat them with. I don't expect them to love them how I love them. I expect them to regard them how I want them regarded, which is you are in a smaller class with more adult eyes on you, because you need that special attention, you need that custom approach. You need somebody that will take the time to say, not to say, oh, this mom is absolutely just through the roof, but to say this mom has some concerns. She just wants to make us know. Especially with my youngest daughter, her needs were so unique that we would call the school and say, hey, we're going to send you a prescription bottle with nothing on it but Tic Tacs in it and she's going to come up at lunch and say she needs her placebo because she's a little bit of a hypochondriac on top of being schizoaffective and on the spectrum.

Speaker 2: 6:01

It's a lot easier to give her a Tic Tac than it is to fight the fight of. You're not supposed to have this or not? Yes, and even if it's a lot easier to give her a Tic Tac than it is to fight the fight of. You're not supposed to have this or not?

Speaker 3: 6:06

Yes, and even if it's just a psychosomatic response to I have a headache Right To her. She had the headache without the Tic Tac.

Speaker 2: 6:14

So, we. Best headache medicine ever. It really was.

Speaker 3: 6:18

And it was funny because she'd go into the nurse and she'd be like, oh, could I have my placebo please? And the other doctors would be like, or the other staff would be like her placebo, yeah, that's her prescription, it's the placebo prescription. But just finding staff and people that regard your child for me that was as a parent, taking that child to kindergarten for the first time was so gut-wrenching. But I feel like when you have a child with other needs, it feels like that every year.

Speaker 3: 6:52

Is this going to be the year that everything falls into place, or is this going to be the year that one puzzle piece falls out and I'm going to spend the whole year having to advocate for my child?

Speaker 2: 7:04

Yeah, for sure, I know. For us it was my one son, just he was excited about school every year, but my other son, at the beginning of every year, didn't want to go, and so we had to constantly be having, you know, offer incentives, which of course, are really just bribes, right, I do.

Speaker 3: 7:23

It's fine, I will bribe my children anytime.

Speaker 2: 7:26

And it works sometimes. And you know what, hey, if ice cream after school got them to go to school? Usually it's just getting over that little hill and once they're there, they're happy. You had something this year.

Speaker 3: 7:36

Well, the truth be told, that you and I, honestly, in being coworkers, when things get real rough, we say we're going to order lunch on Friday, so it's not one incentive that pulls us. Ok, that was a little dopamine drip. Yep, I'm going to get pizza on Friday, so it'll be good. Yeah, so that's just the same thing. We're incentivizing appropriate behavior with our kids. Which thing were you going to?

Speaker 2: 8:03

mention. Oh no, I was just going to say I remember at the beginning of the school year this year, because you were saying last year one of your nieces was upset and this year it was the other niece, and so it's interesting how every year it can be different. But then of course how it looks is different, like you were saying.

Speaker 3: 8:18

So, and beyond my nieces, I also have two grandchildren, one two and one seven that are on the spectrum and I am worried to death because these teeny, tiny little angel babies that I have, they don't live with me, but I have them. I'm imagining them getting into the belly of this giant school bus oh yeah, right, and I'm just so worried about it of this giant school bus, oh yeah, right, and I'm just so worried about it. So if I, who know that this is a safe place and I know what's I am a school teacher, I am a second generation, both of my parents were school teachers I know what's going to happen if I am anxious. How much more is this child anxious? How much more are they? And that's with the behaviors that we see negative in their presentations.

Speaker 3: 9:08

Those show up all the more those last few weeks before school, right? So I almost feel like I have to get ahead of all the planning stuff, because they're going to come home so much more stressed out, so it would be totally available to walk with them through. I mean, last night it was the teacher said for you to get me four different color folders. And you got me four different colors, but one was supposed to be yellow and you didn't get me yellow and it was like we were about to have a five alarm fire.

Speaker 2: 9:36

I mean, we all know Amazon can probably get you that yellow folder in three hours, maybe 12. I know how to quick shop.

Speaker 3: 9:41

But we had to do it because there was nothing in the world worth what that meltdown was going to do to her brain and I did not want her brain and her body being fully adrenalized, fully cortisol, heading into school the next day, especially this year. We can face those situations as parents. We can teach them how to cope with them, but sometimes we pick the time when it's a good time to teach?

Speaker 2: 10:11

Yes, because there are times to hold the line with our kids. But beginning of the school when you know they're going to walk away from you and walk into a new environment, sometimes that's the time to just bribe and meet what they need so they can feel comfort, and sometimes we pick our battles, but sometimes we always also need to pick the timing of our battles.

Speaker 3: 10:30

Yeah, I love that and we do that a lot with our students as well. If I know that they already had some altercations this week or they have something going on at home, but they have some atrocious behavior, I'm going to wink at the behavior. You know we're going to be like don't know, but as far as really addressing it and getting down to it, we're going to give their brains and their bodies some time to get through this week so that they can face it from level ground.

Speaker 2: 11:00

So a tip for parents that are getting through this, I would say is be a good role model by taking care of yourself and modeling for your kids how to take care of them. You know they. I read a quote that was like the stress doesn't kill us, it's our reaction to it that kills us off. Right, and we're all going to face stress.

Speaker 3: 11:16

We're all going to have anxiety. That's part of our brain. We do not want to let that get embedded to the point where that's an automatic reaction or it is an out of proportion reaction, because we then are passing that on to our children. Yep, we're teaching them, they see how to respond. This is how we respond to stressors, with the yelling, with the meltdowns, with the you know wildness. Um, one of the best things that I've tried to instate was a few weeks before school. We take that and I mean people that are better at these things do it the whole summer, but if I can get in a few weeks before school, get them to their school schedule. As far as their sleep schedule for school, yes, we're going to get to that their food schedule for school and come up with a system routine yes, no matter how simple it is.

Speaker 3: 12:09

Every night, we brush our teeth while I'm playing this song, this song and your teeth brushing, and then you take your chewable vitamins and we walk down the hall and tap this wall and do this just so that they start cueing their brains. This is the routine. Start to get sleepy, start to do that and the same thing in the morning. I actually have to deal with my ADHD. I have a playlist that is all really upbeat. The beats per minute are higher than resting heart rate.

Speaker 3: 12:44

Waking you up, yes, but every song is exactly five minutes long, because I have a really bad time blindness. So when my husband goes to work, he's like you got three songs before you have to be out the door, and so if you told me 15 minutes, I would say sure, and then, 45 minutes later, be like is it 15 minutes yet? Right, but I can sense the passage of songs, so so that's part of my routine. As soon as I hear one of the songs on that playlist, I know that my brain and my body start to wake up, so I do that. Then I go immediately and brush my teeth, and it can be the smallest things. It's also an opportunity really to make some family traditions. That are maybe the smallest thing, oh yeah, that's neat.

Speaker 3: 13:32

Like every night, I give my little girl butterfly kisses on the cheek, and then we go to bed.

Speaker 3: 13:36

So make those things part of the culture of your home and part of your bonding practices, because even the most prickly of kids I've shared quite often where my son has reactive attachment disorder and he he suspects I might be at the bottom of every world war somewhere. It was my fault so I'm not his favorite. So finding ways to connect with him and and habituating that into a daily routine is something that helps. It also keeps them emotionally. It helps keep constants when their world's about to flip into a new grade. We've got some constants for you. We still do this every night, we still wash the dishes, we play this song while you're getting your pajamas on and anytime. You can link those routines to the five senses. That just makes it stronger.

Speaker 2: 14:30

Oh, yeah, for sure, especially that sense of smell. Sometimes we forget to leave that one out, but it can be really powerful too for like sleep.

Speaker 3: 14:39

Well, especially junior high boys, the sense of smell as a whole.

Speaker 2: 14:45

Why do they smell like onions? Thank you so much for joining us for part one of three of our discussion on back-to-school stressors and unique tips to thrive and survive. In this first part, we talked about the importance of communication with teachers, staying positive through the anxiety and establishing schedules and routines. In our next episode, we will talk about the empowering of ourselves and our children to tackle the upcoming year. Thank you for watching and listening. We'll see you soon.

Speaker 1: 15:14

This program is made possible by friends and partners of the Special Parent Podcast. For more information and to join our mailing list, visit specialparentorg.