Easing Back-to-School Transitions: Music, Games, and Small Wins with Shawna Fox (Back to School: Part 3) | Ep19

Can music and games really help both parents and children transition smoothly back to school? That’s exactly what we discuss with our wonderful guest, Shawna Fox, in this episode of the Special Parent Podcast. We explore practical techniques to shift from an emotional state to a logical thinking brain, making the start of the school year a little less stressful. From dancing in the car to celebrating small wins with special treats, Shawna shares personal stories that highlight how simple pleasures can lead to big improvements.

Ever tried celebrating the first day of school with an ice cream outing? We delve into family traditions that ease back-to-school stress and explore the significance of simple rewards in motivating children. Tackling common challenges like school transportation for special needs children, we provide proactive strategies for smoother arrangements, such as checking bus schedules and providing comfort items. Our experiences emphasize the importance of patience and understanding, showing that even the small steps can make a significant impact.

Parenthood is a rollercoaster of emotions, especially when raising differently-abled children. Shawna and I share humorous and heartfelt anecdotes, such as dealing with stubborn cowlicks on picture day or the emotional toll of school drop-offs. We emphasize resilience and the power of adapting parenting styles to meet unique needs. Through humor and celebrating small victories, we aim to bring joy and empowerment to your back-to-school journey, reminding you that it's okay to embrace the chaos and find laughter along the way.

Chapters

• 0:00 Coping Strategies for Back to School
• 11:16 Navigating Back to School Stressors
• 19:27 Laughing and Crying Through Parenthood
• 25:32 Surviving Back to School Tips

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Special Parent Podcast. This is part three of a discussion on back to school with Shawna Fox. If you missed parts one and two, please go to my webpage, specialparentorg, and get caught up there. First, we continue talking about coping strategies to use when surviving the start of the school year. Our discussion focuses on teaching our children and ourselves how to move from an emotional brain to our logic thinking brain. As special needs parents, we will have the same worries as every parent out there and more. Our focus is on our wins, our wins, our kids' wins, everyone's wins. Part three is all about encouragement, empowering ourselves and our children and creating the wins in every day.

Speaker 2: 0:52

We wanted to tell the coping strategies and what works for them.

Speaker 1: 0:56

Yes, so because it might be the coloring, it might be the music, it might be the thinking about something different.

Speaker 2: 1:12

There's so many different ways we can, and honestly, using our you know our media platforms, or using that in a constructive way to say all right, so you can have 30 minutes more of doing this because you made these great choices. Or sometimes, especially when they're games and stuff that are logic based or music stuff, it will move them from that middle brain to their temporal lobe or to their frontal lobe and those areas are so much stronger and better able to take care of us in our decision making. So, in teaching them that we're really honest with our kids and with our students, we say I'm not trying to manipulate you right now. I'm saying to you you are in your middle brain and we need you. To you, let's, let's. Which part of your brain would you like to go to? Do you want to do your cerebellum? Do you want to go jump rope? Yeah, what do you want to do?

Speaker 1: 1:58

or we have that little hook game where it's like they yes, they and it's and it's broken right now. We got to get it fixed. They like throw the hook at this wall and some I've made it once.

Speaker 2: 2:09

I spent four times. I spent like four to five minutes with it being swung at my head this morning. Did it connect? Yeah, it did not connect oh, okay but the student was going. I'm getting so close, miss so close. You're not even flinching Like you're a bad shot.

Speaker 1: 2:26

You're like I have hope.

Speaker 2: 2:29

But I think, and sometimes, when we're so stressed out, when there's nothing else you can do, the best thing to do is to look and go. I am so stressed out, are you stressed out? And if you like to dance, throw on an awesome upbeat song and dance it out.

Speaker 1: 2:47

I used to do that in the car on the way to school. I'd throw on something and we'd get. Of course I was trying to drive at the same time.

Speaker 2: 2:53

Yes, we made it everywhere safe.

Speaker 1: 2:55

But you know just that upbeat dance music and it just it kind of just took us away from the stress of it. You and your temporal lobe, yes, and filled my brain with all the good of it. You and your temporal lobe, yes, and filled my brain with all the good chemicals it's supposed to have. So when I did get to school, even though I still felt that anxious anxiety feeling, it wasn't as strong, and I felt empowered to kind of push through it, to just kind of go ahead, and usually really what it comes down to, especially with starting school, is getting past that first day or that first getting out of the car.

Speaker 1: 3:27

If we can get past that, normally everything else just kind of starts to happen.

Speaker 2: 3:32

It's also been. My youngest son started his teaching career this week his first-time teacher, oh my gosh and he sent a picture today of this beautiful bagel sandwich from a restaurant out by his school Mm-hmm. And he said all week I was so stressed out and I just kept thinking on Thursday you're getting that bagel sandwich. At some point in time this week I will be in a non-stress bubble.

Speaker 2: 4:01

And me and that sandwich are all that matter, yeah it's going to be OK, and even though it's something simple, to give them something beyond. With my nieces it's been hey, but on Saturday we're going to go swimming. So just project yourself to thinking towards that, because our brains get stuck in the here and now and that first week can be so intimidating, and not only for our children but for us, I definitely think, for special needs moms. Sometimes we might be even more anxious Because we've got all the thoughts.

Speaker 2: 4:35

Yes, we're trying to take of the 17 things, and I'm going to tell you right now from the perspective of a teacher, especially a teacher that's working with students with exceptional needs. I have all the mercy in the world for parents on those first few weeks.

Speaker 1: 4:51

Yeah, it's so rough just to sometimes get them there, get them to have the right stuff, right? I say and I know you say this too because, again, our supply list is come, just get them there. However it comes, it's fine, absolutely. It's really okay If they did not brush their teeth the first couple of days. I know we all go, but it's okay. If that's what we had to give up, or if they didn't get their hair brushed on that first, that's just fine, that's okay.

Speaker 2: 5:21

And if and if that becomes something that's long, long term, then we say you know what?

Speaker 2: 5:28

we're going to. We're going to send them a little bag with a brush and a toothbrush in it and we as a school are going to give them a moment in time where we put that expectation in place. We just take the things that are stressors towards us for that and just relinquish them. It's not. My mom always says to. I have a niece that is profoundly on the spectrum and she'll always say Sarah, it's not the end of the world. And so Sarah has her phrases that she repeats them mostly that we don't like, like when she calls me Chewy Butt Neck, but she says Shauna's Chewy Butt Neck. But it makes her laugh.

Speaker 2: 6:06

It does, it makes her laugh and she giggles, and then we all giggle Well yeah, I laugh at it Because you don't have a choice. I laugh at a lot of things that most people don't, but just to have that second, that thing and to just lay it down, okay, you know what I would love for you to go to school with your hair cute and your teeth brushed, but if not, okay.

Speaker 1: 6:32

And if you got the wins every year. I think, if we can just find the win sometimes, that's what I really have to focus on is, instead of focusing on what didn't happen, we have to focus on what did. What did happen today, what did happen in this moment, what did happen before they went, and if we can focus on that. Sometimes that's the feedback when we give the teacher after the first week of school hey, we had these great wins. Still working on a few things. Can you help me out, like if it is a toothbrush thing or whatever it is we did have.

Speaker 1: 6:58

I remember we did have a student that we had like hair supplies and deodorant at school and when he got to school he just went into the staff bathroom area where it was private and other students wouldn't see him, and just because I don't know why he didn't do it at home, mom didn't either, but it worked, and so it's the way of making the student comfortable, helping the parents just overcome these obstacles, and I think that if you can find a team that works with and start talking to other parents, they have great ideas about it and I want to encourage parents not to catastrophize the first few days.

Speaker 2: 7:35

Yeah, because we know our child is nervous. We're nervous. So if they came home and they misread a situation, or they rightly read a situation, and they're saying something, and then we are like that is not going down, I'm calling the teacher tomorrow. And now this child's going back knowing that their teacher is going to get called and they're calling me. I would say, on those issues, as much as you possibly can, unless it's, you know, a major issue, but even maybe not let your child know, not let your child know and just say OK, well, you know what, we're going to work it out. We're going to work it out Giving them that confidence. We're going to work it out. You're so awesome for still sticking around and not, you didn't melt down at that, that's awesome. So what do you think we can do tomorrow to make it better? Besides me, you know talking and we'll find ways, but to not catastrophize understanding that their brains might be.

Speaker 1: 8:30

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 8:32

They might be catastrophizing.

Speaker 1: 8:33

So we have to, as parents, model how not to do that and model how to relax or, like you were saying, nope, we're just going to handle that when inside you're going oh my gosh, but you're going to have that as a separate conversation or phone call or whatever that the child doesn't know about. So the child thinks tomorrow, oh, everything's going to be okay, cause my mom said it's going to be fine, right?

Speaker 2: 8:54

So it's going to be fine, and and if it happens again, then we'll hear it out. You know, I had an incident where, um, there was a substitute teacher and she had made my son eat, Um, and he was on a very particular schedule when he ate and he couldn and he did not eat at lunchtime with the other students and all the staff knew that, they knew what his eating schedule was, but the sub didn't, and she made him eat and then he took his chocolate milk and opened his mouth and just drooled it all down the front of him like the adorable little prince that he is.

Speaker 1: 9:32

Well, he made his point point.

Speaker 2: 9:33

He did make his point and then I got a phone call a week later from the staff asking me to please make sure that my son wears clean clothes to school.

Speaker 2: 9:43

And I was mortified because I was like my kids are always I lay out their clothes and I spend way too much time on the clearance racks at Ross. That boy is well-dressed. Well then I found out that that got him so stuck and he wouldn't talk about it with me. He was hiding that chocolate milk rotted shirt in his backpack or in the laundry room and he would change into it on the bus.

Speaker 2: 10:12

So for over a week he wore that same shirt, never washed, never washed with this rotting milk and then would go and just stare at the ladies the nice ladies in the cafeteria, because they were part of this nightmare that, even though they weren't in his mind exactly very much were, and so from both sides of that, they could have overreacted and said what is this mom even doing with their child's life?

Speaker 2: 10:35

And I could have overreacted and said why is this teacher making him? We have very clear medical stuff on paper. But it wasn't. It was a sub that didn't know better. She didn't have a note, it would never happen again. It didn't happen again, right.

Speaker 1: 10:50

And that's part of the stress of going back to school is we know that our kids hopefully get you know a great staff that get to know them. But there's going to be a sub at some point and the idea of how is that going to be navigated for some of our kids that do have these unique needs and they're triggered by things that a sub is not going to think is triggering because it's normal everyday thing for most people. It's not for that child and it's triggering for them. One of our family traditions I guess you could call it is the first day of school we always go out for ice cream afterward.

Speaker 2: 11:23

You don't even have to eat your dinner that night, I mean my kids usually come home ravished and they're like stuffing their faces anyways.

Speaker 1: 11:29

But that's not a requirement for ice cream that day. We just we go out to ice cream after school and first day of school. That's what we do, and this was the first year that one child had a different first day of school than the other two. Well, guess what? We had two ice cream nights Because there was no way I was going to tell one child you can't have any ice cream and then tell the other two you get ice cream, it is your first day, yeah, well and so.

Speaker 2: 11:59

But even little things like that, it can be okay.

Speaker 1: 12:03

So we, we don't know why chocolate milk made me think of that because rotten dairy products?

Speaker 2: 12:10

um, it can be simple, as you had a great first day. Great first day means we're going to the park and you are going to go down that slide and get all of your energy out and then come tell me some sort of reward, something beyond that stressor that they can think to. Maybe for some of them they just want to go home and zone out now on the couch and wonder.

Speaker 1: 12:32

you know what life is.

Speaker 2: 12:33

Maybe they need to sleep. Yes, it's exhausting. Whatever it is, that is a reward to their reward system that says you've done well, do that. And I would encourage, not just that first day but at the end of that first week as well.

Speaker 1: 12:48

You know another topic that we, as special educators and special needs moms, see tackling every year transportation. Food Seems to never get it right on the first day. Either they completely miss picking up your child the paperwork's not done, they can't find the paperwork or, because they're a transfer student, the transportation's not even set up yet, and that is a paperwork process that takes days and, I hate to say, weeks for some times, but I've seen it take that long. You have too. So, as a parent who's having to navigate, I have to get to work, I have other kids, whatever else, how do we handle this transportation, or even the anticipation of the stress of it?

Speaker 2: 13:30

I'm going to start with very unrealistic and unpopular opinion and that is going to be. There are years that I took that first day half of the day off to just take my child to school and to pick them up or arrange with my husband to pick them up, to take that one less stressor off of them and myself, and obviously not everybody's in that situation. But again, sometimes we just say we've got so much new happening in this day, we're going to do school new today, we're going to do transportation new starting tomorrow. We'll see. If you're not able to be in a situation to do that, I would be very proactive with making sure most schools now have the software where you can go and look that their bus information is on that. I would make sure that it is there and if not I would kindly and nicely call the office and if so go see them.

Speaker 1: 14:27

As they say, you get more bees with honey. So it is. And transportation is notoriously known for right not being the most receptive right it is a totally different entity it is all part of the same school, but it but it's not it's on a different property.

Speaker 2: 14:43

It's got a different government governance and management style. Everything's different. So to call and attack and angrily pursue this, um, I don't think that's going to get your child or you what you want. It's going to end up being more stressful. There is an expectation of safety with our kiddos.

Speaker 1: 15:03

So, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 15:05

That's something that just has to be done. My daughter had to be switched from her bus because she knocked out a 11 year old boy. She also was 11 because she said hi to him every morning on the bus and he did not not respond to her, even though he was nonverbal. She did not understand that. Right, that did not comprehend for her One day.

Speaker 1: 15:29

Their two disabilities did not go well together. Go well together.

Speaker 2: 15:32

And that's the challenge, because if they're on specialized transportation, usually there'll be two or three children on there. There'll be two or three children on there. And the other thing you also want to make sure is if my child is the last pickup or the first pickup. I don't want them to be on a bus every day for an hour, hour and a half, before or after school. Yeah, that's too much, so you want to know what those schedules look like.

Speaker 1: 15:56

Yeah, that's really important.

Speaker 2: 15:57

Those are the times where I'm the annoying parent and I'm going to call them. Yeah, we're going to figure it out, yeah, we've got to figure this out, because it's not right for my child to go through that. And maybe to have something, depending on the age, like a little squishable keychain or a fidget or something that they can have with them for the bus yes, or a comfort item, a comfort item for the bus?

Speaker 1: 16:21

Yeah, because the bus can be calming, just that move. I mean, how many times did we put our kid, when they were car seat age, in the car and drive, just so they would go to sleep for a while and so the bus can be moving, but for other kids it can be completely overwhelming or I mean we're here in arizona and it's happened where it's 113 and the ac is broken on the bus. There is is zero way that bus ride's comfortable. You're in a metal tube, yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:46

And it's not a dry heat.

Speaker 1: 16:47

in August we have humidity in August. You got 113 plus the humidity, and I don't care how many times you put those little windows down.

Speaker 2: 16:54

You're just blowing a furnace on you.

Speaker 1: 16:57

And so it can be super overwhelming for our kids. So we have to, like you said, give them a comfort, give them an item send them a little travel size spray bottle with water in it yes and say yep, this is for afterschool.

Speaker 2: 17:09

So only use this on the bus and hope you know. Of course my son would have dismantled it and buried it somewhere in the backyard, but still, whatever. Whatever it is is something or even like a bandana that they can get wet in the water fountain and wrap it around their neck.

Speaker 1: 17:26

Let me be clear Back of the neck, yes, back of the neck.

Speaker 2: 17:30

You might want to show us how to do that or teach them to use like their little ice pack in their lunchbox. They can take it and put it on their Vegas, anything like that to help.

Speaker 1: 17:41

That's a great idea. I didn't think about that. It sounds like the main or key thing that we keep talking about is we as parents. It's us staying positive. It's us kind of preparing ourselves for this and talking to other special needs parents, getting ideas and, yes, it's super stressful. But if we stay ahead of the game, stay ahead of what the system's asking of us, we're still going to miss something. Absolutely every year I missed something. In fact, last year my one son didn't get a yearbook. Thankfully he was my youngest. Who was like what am I gonna?

Speaker 2: 18:10

do with it.

Speaker 1: 18:11

I was like, okay, I took a sharpie, they signed my shirt yeah I'm fine, he was like oh so, but I swear I ordered that yearbook. Yeah right, I was combing through all the nope I didn't order that one but again. Three different schools, three different yearbooks. Apparently, in my mind, I ordered it. So all that bad. And you order at the beginning of the school year for all, for two of my kids, not for the third. So that's why.

Speaker 2: 18:35

Right, it's the to-do list and I would encourage you to look at it like this. And I would encourage you to look at it like this Brace myself, the first week there's going to be glitches.

Speaker 2: 18:46

Stuff's going to fall through the cracks there's going to be. My child may very well demonstrate the extreme meltdown version of where they're at, or the hardest, or the most anxiety, or the biggest introversion. I'm going to prepare that that's going to happen. Or the biggest introversion I'm going to prepare that that's going to happen and I am going to determine and have a little to-do list options in my head that if this rolls out, I'm going to do it. But they're going to see positivity from me and if at night you plunk your head down on your pillow and you've had a kiddo that got to school, stayed the day, got home and they're relatively safe and happy, then that was a win.

Speaker 1: 19:27

We're going to try again tomorrow, and if you need to cry in that pillow, you go right ahead. I've done plenty of those nights.

Speaker 2: 19:32

You drop them off at school, you cry. They get on the bus you cry. You go home you cry.

Speaker 1: 19:37

And then I just blame it on allergies.

Speaker 2: 19:39

That's what I do, that's my healthy coping strategy. I got mascara in my eyeball, so just accept that this is a high stress week for everybody, even stuff that is really minor, that most weeks wouldn't even hit our radar.

Speaker 1: 19:58

And the key thing is, we all got through it when we were younger. We're going to get through it as adults and as parents and they're going to get through it too, and really for the 99% of the things that are going to happen, whether they're good or they're bad, are still just going to happen and be gone.

Speaker 1: 20:14

And the next day is a new day and the next week is a new week and pretty soon you're looking in Arizona. We get October break, so it's going to be okay, just like you tell your kid it's going to be okay, but in your mind it's a catastrophe. It really is going to be okay, we're going to get through this too. We're going to get through it, and next year we're going to do it again Pull up, that's right.

Speaker 2: 20:33

Take out old pictures and say look, this was your first day of kindergarten.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Look grade, Look at all these first days that you have absolutely just conquered.

Speaker 2: 20:45

Yes, I love that you're empowering them to just another first day for my high schoolers this year. I had them, as an exercise the first day, do a timeline of their hair, the first day of school, as far back as they can remember till now, and I was just really trying to ground them to say hey, look, and I've said OK, so this is your ninth first day, this is your 10th first day, especially for my freshmen to get in here. You've done this before. I know it all feels really new, but you've done this before and even with that horrible haircut, even with this horrible haircut, you're killing it, kid, you're doing great. You're killing it, kid, you're doing great. Just to find ways to assure them hey, we might, it might be, this whole day might be not your best first day, that's okay. You had others that were great and you'll have another one. And guess what? Tomorrow, your second day can be different, exactly.

Speaker 1: 21:35

Maybe your second day will be amazing. Today was our third day of school and it was picture day and I did everything. And Chromebook day, oh, and Chromebook day and all the days it was like well, let's just throw it all in one day, put it all together.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Yeah, so that way teachers can just say don't teach this day Exactly. And we worked on my son's hair this morning, but when we took his, his picture, there was a piece that was like so my son has this beautiful swoop of hair with like a, he's got a sail up, he's got great calic, and and there is he does. There is just no hiding that, no.

Speaker 2: 22:08

so he's got his hair waving you, and so you should get all those pictures and line them up and do like a topographic map of his calic years how it's shifted and I love that.

Speaker 1: 22:20

That's the key thing to special needs parenting, I think, is just being able to look back and laugh and laugh and just take a deep breath sometimes and realize you are getting through all of this you're surviving and if you, if you're, if you're listening to us, you're trying to learn because you love your kid, yep, so you're doing it right.

Speaker 2: 22:38

I mean, that's, that's really what we're doing, right we're? We're waking up every day. This is new. Most of us did not go into parenting understanding that we would be parenting differently abled children, right, that sometimes our highs and lows would look different, and so most of the time, we have this parenting archetype of how it was done, based on how our parents parented us, how our grandparents and it doesn't work.

Speaker 2: 23:08

Yeah, it doesn't, the rules don't apply or they have to look different because my child has different needs. Yeah, so I say all the time when I tell stories and I'll think it's hilarious, and then I see groups of mortified people like you, buried all the calculators in your backyard.

Speaker 1: 23:30

And I'm like, yeah, that's funny.

Speaker 2: 23:31

How's that not awesome, Like someday some archeologist is going to come around and say we don't know what was going on in this part of the state. There are a lot of backs to remote controls here, Right and so. But you laugh or you cry. Am I okay that my son is stealing? No but he's a kleptomaniac.

Speaker 1: 23:53

And it's not that you're not working on it. So here we go. First day of school, we're working on all these things. First week of school. We're going to get through it, but at the end, just take a deep breath. You're surviving every day and learn to laugh at those things because they are going to be minuscule and funny stories. Right, that's right. And just know that because you're working on it, you're already succeeding.

Speaker 2: 24:13

Exactly so. You are, you're loving, you are loving your baby enough to realize that they have unique needs. It's so much easier and more difficult at the same time to fall back on the archetypes and to say well, my parents, if I did that, my parents would have well, my aunt.

Speaker 1: 24:32

And even still, you still hear that in culture and I will tell you that from family members yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 24:39

And so do I, and so would I. And then you know it was like, oh, oh, you've got all the answers, okay. Well, here's a three-year-old from a Bulgarian orphanage. See what you can do, right? And now I'm 27 years later and he's still giving me wet willies with his knee sweat. So things just look different and it's not easy. It's uncomfortable as a parent, it's uncomfortable as a teacher, to not fit the norm, right, right, when we have kids that are outliers, that's difficult. But gosh, you just love them. And I have the crazy stories that my babies have given me.

Speaker 1: 25:20

And again you laugh or you cry Yep, and we're you laugh or you cry Yep, and we're going to have more episodes on those stories. Okay, because they're worth it, absolutely. For sure they are. So thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it and I look forward to future times that you're able to join me Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 25:35

Anytime you'd like, as long as you give me Starbucks and drive.

Speaker 1: 25:38

Always, I'm the gift giver.

Speaker 2: 25:44

That bucks and drive Always. I'm the gift giver. That's right, and I love coffee.

Speaker 1: 25:46

I just like the tea, that's true. Thank you guys so much for joining us today and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you so much for watching our three episodes on surviving back to school. The key points that we covered were staying positive, knowing things are not going to go all right all the time, but that's okay. We've all survived going back to school and guess what? So will our kids, and we will move on and we will be good, accept that there's gonna be stress, focus on the wins and have grace for yourself, the school staff, your children and everyone involved in this journey. Your most important tool is your ability to laugh and find the joys. Thank you so much for watching and listening and we look forward to seeing you again.