Kari Baker, founder of KIND Families, and host of The KIND Families Podcast is a former financial services executive turned author, speaker, and podcaster.
525: When Your Kid Has Autism
Kari Baker
Kari Baker shares her experience of raising a son with autism and the challenges she faced. She discusses her son's early signs of being neurodivergent and the initial shock and grief she felt upon learning about her son's condition. Find out how she moved to acceptance and helping others find resources for neurodivergent kids.
Ep 526- Kari Baker
Read the Transcript 🡮
*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Kari Baker: Just because this diagnosis is now in your hands does not change who that child is, what their heart is what their brain can do. It doesn't limit their capabilities or their future. It just means that you're going to need to start to really vet out the strengths that your child has.
[00:00:23] Hunter: You're listening to The Mindful Mama Podcast, episode number 526. Today, we're talking about when your kid has autism with Carrie Baker as part of the Different Brains Amazing Kids series.
Welcome to The Mindful Mama Podcast. Here, it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have, and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training, and I'm the author of the international bestsellers “Raising Good Humans”, “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and the “Raising Good Humans Guided Journal”.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. A special welcome to you if you are new here. I'm so glad you're here. You're joining in for the “Different Brains, Amazing Kids” series. And last week we talked about misconceptions about ADHD kids with Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart. And I'm so happy for you to be introduced to Kari Baker today. She's the founder of KIND Families, host of the KIND Families podcast, and a former financial services executive turned author, speaker, and podcaster.
And we're going to talk about her experience raising a son with autism and the challenges that she faced and how she finds these, her son's early signs of being neurodivergent you know, the grief that she felt about it. So you're gonna hear about how she moved from this grief to acceptance and really helping others find resources. So if you have a neurodivergent kid, you probably may relate to Kari Baker's story. So join me at the table as I talk to Kari Baker.
Are you passionate about parenting and maybe want to become a parenting coach? Perhaps you're a teacher, a therapist, doula, or simply a parenting junkie. Well then let me tell you about the Mindful Parenting Teacher and Coach Training Program. It's a five month intensive program that can be done from anywhere around the world and gives you everything you need to bring mindful parenting to the people in your life.
Here's what people have said about it:
[00:02:55] Mindful Mama Member: Hunter's The program that really drew me in was that it wasn't just on, like, how do we practice mindfulness. It incorporated the communication and the problem solving and, you know, went a lot deeper. It was really, really amazing to be going through this process and have that, like, weekly support that extended beyond just our teacher training, really. The whole process was really well laid out and organized and having the materials from a teacher perspective was really nice as well. The course is so thorough: you're given every single bit of material that you could possibly need. This is really a community, reaching far and wide. And I think that this program, because it works on decreasing your inner stress response and taking care of yourself, so then you can give that back to your children and model that behavior for your children as they're growing up into adulthood. You know, just seeing the positive changes in my own family and knowing that like, as I continue to spread that into the community, that will be like, just even more far reaching.
[00:03:56] Hunter: Enrollment is open now and there are limited spots available. Step into your dream of becoming a Mindful Parenting coach. Find out more at mindfulparentingcourse.com/teach. That's mindfulparentingcourse.com/teach.
I'm looking forward to talking to you about your son, but I'd like to start with ourselves because there's so much of us in this and I'm wondering for you, how were you raised and what was your childhood like?
[00:04:38] Kari Baker: Well, if it's any indication, I've heard it said that the quality of the relationship with your parents is how far away you live from them as an adult and I live three blocks away from my parents.
I had a great upbringing. We were a small family, just my sister and myself and my parents. Very traditional. We sat down to dinner every single night around the dining room table. My dad was very big on family time, so we would go to Lake every weekend and spend time together. And they've just been influential from a business standpoint.
My dad was always kind of my work hero, and my mom was kind of just my personality hero. She was always optimistic and So it was kind of funny when I was pregnant with my son, we looked at a house that was three blocks away from my parents, and I looked at my husband, I'm like, there's no way you're going to want to live that close, are you?
And he said, well, you know, if we have a kid, it's going to be really helpful. So and it has been, so it's been wonderful because they've been hugely influential in Brady's life. He's they are so close to him, and if they go more than a few days without seeing him, it's It's hard for all of them involved.
So it was just a, it was a great way to grow up in a great place with people who really had moral integrity and values and, and turned my sister and I into hardworking people too, so. I love them to pieces.
[00:06:05] Hunter: Great. Wow. That's, that's really nice. That often we are, we're reacting against sometimes, you know, and, and that's nice to know that there are so many wonderful values and practices and things that you really want to keep going with your fulfillment.
That's really beautiful. So you, your son Brady has been diagnosed with autism. When did you discover that he was a neurodivergent kid. How did you realize that these, that any kind of differences he had might be something, you know, more than just normal developmental differences?
[00:06:41] Kari Baker: Right. Well, even as a very young child, we would go to mommy and me classes and, you know, they always want you to sit around in the circle and sing the song when everybody gets there with your kid in your lap.
And Brady wanted nothing to do with that. He was always in the corner of the room rolling around on his back and, you know, the kids would be on the bouncy mat and Brady would be trying to figure out how the hose fit together with the motor for the AC. for the blow up thing. So he was always just kind of on the fringe of where the other kids were.
And I used to joke, we'd go to play dates and Brady would be as far away from other kids as possible. And it was impacting my ability to have conversations with the moms and build relationships. So I would joke that I was going to hire a babysitter to come to play dates because I wasn't getting a chance to bond with the other moms.
And But still, you know, I hadn't been around kids that much, so I didn't really have a point of comparison for him. It was all new, and he was fine with us. You know, he was, he seemed typical around our family. He was comfortable around my husband and me and my family and my mother in law. But when he got to preschool, we really started to notice that the other kids were running off and playing with each other.
They were making friends. We had an amazing preschool teacher who sent home probably 50 pictures a day of what they did during the class. And Brady was never with the other kids. Again, you know, they had circle time. Brady was in the back of the room and So, finally, it was, it was really kind of it all came together almost in a waterfall.
One day, I dropped him off he had been having some major problems with potty training at the time, and I asked the teacher, you know, are other kids having these problems? And she said, no, not really. And I asked her about him not being with the class, and she said, yeah, he usually wants to be away, but when we call him back, he's You know, he's very good about it and he'll come and sit for a few minutes before he goes away.
And that day I got home from school and I picked up a magazine that was just a local kind of social free edition that they send out. And there was an article in it by a woman named Patty Dion whose son was diagnosed with Asperger's. In his 30s and she talked about kind of his peculiarities as a child, his inability to make friends, and it just started to well up that, oh my goodness, this, this might be what Brady has.
And at the bottom of that article, there was a quiz. that I went online and I took and I answered yes to every single question on the quiz. And it just hit me like a freight train that my son was autistic and I didn't know how to verbalize that. to my husband or to my parents or anything else, but I just knew on a completely full body level that that's exactly what was going on with Brady.
So it, it kind of was a very slow Slow build at first, but then when we started, when I put those pieces together, it was just apparent. And we honestly started therapies for him before we even had a diagnosis, because it took quite a while to get in to see a developmental pediatrician and a psychologist to try to get the formal diagnosis.
It was several months, and we just kind of started scrambling and trying to pull things together based on other parents advice. So.
[00:10:22] Hunter: Well, So can I ask you about your initial reaction to sort of taking this quiz and having this realization? I mean, did you feel relief? Were you, were you sad? Were you in, you know, grieving?
Were, what, was it all of that? What was going on for you as you realized that this was, You know, possibly your son's diagnosis.
[00:10:50] Kari Baker: I was devastated. I was, it was not relief because I didn't know anything about autism. I didn't know anything. They don't even really diagnose Asperger's anymore, but Asperger's is a more verbal form of autism and I did not know what that meant for my son, for his future.
I didn't know whether he would be, with other kids. I, ironically, about three weeks before this happened we were playing at a trampoline park with my best friend and her girls, and There was an incident where a boy came up to my friend's daughter and grabbed her by the back of the head and slammed her head into the glass, by the glass wall, and she wasn't really hurt, but I remember grabbing her and picking her up and, and there was a dad that ran up onto the platform and he said, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, he doesn't know what he's doing, he's, he has Asperger's.
I was horrible. I was horrible. And so that, that episode three weeks ago was the only great idea of aspect that I had in my head. I didn't know anybody whose kids were on the spectrum. And so I was really, I was completely devastated. And I mentioned that my parents lived three blocks away. My mom happened to call.
I think it's mommy SP that sometimes, sometimes happens when we know our kids are in trouble and And when I picked up the phone, she knew something was wrong, and my dad was at my door about two minutes later, and I just collapsed, and he did too. You know, and it was a it, it was just completely life changing and looking back now you know, it, it's, it was a It was jarring and it took me way too long to learn enough and to become accepting of it.
It took me years. I held that anger and that grief. I'm a planner by nature. I just, I like to know what's going to happen and when it's going to happen and this kind of set my whole plan completely, and we just took a 180 degree turn. And it took me a long time to come to terms with that. And I wish, I wish I had worked through it a lot more quickly than I had.
I think we made probably a lot of mistakes in the beginning of our journey that to do over again, I, I would I would go back and change. But, you know, the good news is that was a decade ago. He's 13 now. The one thing that we decided on day one when I, when my husband came home that night and I told him what my, my knowledge was, and, and he just said, then we just got to hit the ground running at a thousand miles an hour and do as much as we can to give him the best quality of life that he can have.
And. And that's what we, we did. And, you know, even without a diagnosis, I, I had heard from other contacts and online that he needed speech therapy and he needed occupational therapy and, and other kinds of things. And we just got on the phone and, And started getting appointments and evaluations, and, and, you know, it's been ten years now and I can't even count them.
My husband is a spreadsheet ninja, I like to call him, and he tried to keep track of all the therapies Brady had been doing on this spreadsheet, and after about a year it was just a ridiculous amount of hours, he's like, I'm not even going to count them. would I even keep track of this anymore, but, but the, you know, the, the other part of that though is that it was fun for Brady.
Brady was great with adults. So his major major dysfunction from a social level was with peers, but if he, man, if he could get one on one attention from an adult, he loved it. He thrived in it. And so these therapies with these qualified people who would sit down and work with him, they were all play based and he loved it.
He never complained about it. He just, and he never really knew what Any different kind of life.
[00:14:57] Hunter: Stay tuned for More Mindful Mama Podcasts right after this break.
[00:15:35] Hunter: You're saying, you know, I wish I'd learned and accepted this faster. And I just want to say, oh, mama, you know, like. You're allowed to be human, you know? You're allowed to grieve this and to have a hard time because that's a really hard thing and a really, really hard thing. I don't know. I just, I just want, I'm hearing that voice and I just want to say that like, you, you know, you, no one said you were going to be perfect and, and it's okay for you to make mistakes.
[00:16:06] Kari Baker: Well, thank you. And I, I did and I do look back now and I had to get through that process and it was my own path of getting through it. And it was. It was, it was a redirection of focus. So my focus when I was so upset and bitter was on me. It was that my plans had changed my, you know, my perfect little life that I had planned for wasn't working and you know, I.
Things were harder than I wanted them to be, you know, I wanted to just have the regular I wanted to take him to soccer practice That's a bad example because I hate soccer But I wanted to take him to to some kind of a you know regular kid activity rather than therapies, you know all day and I everything was focused on me and When I finally started to focus on all the things he could do and all the amazing gifts that he does have, and that this path that he is on is exactly the path he's supposed to be on, and so is mine.
And so once I was able to let go of that, and that's not to say that I don't still get my pangs of you know, wishing that, that his school path had been easier, you know, those kinds of things that got really hard in finding a school that was appropriate for him, and having kids not treat him the way that I would want him to be treated.
Those kinds of things. I, I still wish I could change. But he's gonna, he's gonna do amazing things. He's got unbelievable talents and creativity and, and he's unbelievably loyal. He's unbelievably sweet. He wants to make people happy. I mean, it's, we're very, very lucky to have the kid that we have. And So that was what I had to come to terms with.
[00:18:01] Hunter: Yeah. That's gotta be hard. I mean, for me, the only thing I can relate to is this idea of like, I had to, for me, I had to come to terms with my anger and to be like, Oh, I have to accept that this crazy temper that if you've listened to any other podcast, that's crazy. You know, that is here and I have to accept that it's here.
I can't just pretend to be in denial that's not here. Like we kind of were, I don't know, I think in a lot of ways like we're taught by our culture to just like deny things, like pretend, you know, don't, don't cry, don't have these feelings, don't do this, whatever. And then when these feelings arise and the, you know, and you said you had anger, you had grief, you know, you, you.
We just feel like there's something wrong with me for even having these feelings. Yes. Which makes it just even harder to get to this place of like, oh, okay, these are here, you know, I've got to process them. I've got to digest them somehow. You know?
[00:19:00] Kari Baker: Absolutely. And, you know, I think it was finding community too, like it was very isolating.
At first, like I said, I didn't know anyone who had a child on the spectrum and it was, we didn't want to tell anyone because we didn't want people to react. to the, even the term autism the way that, that we did and have them not want to have their kid play with our son or not want to have him in the classroom.
And there were, you know, unfortunately there were parents that we dealt with that kind of, of attitude toward our son. And so we kept it a secret for a long time. We would, we would come up, I, I can't tell you the number of times somebody would ask me something and I'd say, well, he's. He's a little bit developmentally delayed and, but we would never use even the word autism because we were afraid of what other people's connotation of autism was.
[00:19:58] Hunter: I think this maybe is a good time to kind of pause and say like, well, what is autism, right? Like we, you're saying like we used to use the term Asperger's, we don't use that term anymore. We all use the term like on the spectrum, but what is that spectrum? Ed, can you, I know you're a parent, not necessarily a pediatrician or an expert scientist on this, but what is, what's your understanding of this?
[00:20:21] Kari Baker: So, somebody with an autistic brain literally has different wiring in their brain. And so, things that maybe come naturally to some children, like the social aspect. You know, if you're at a park and two neurotypical children see each other and they pick up a rock, and they decide to If they want to play with the rock together, they'll be holding hands and asking their mom for a playdate five minutes later.
Well, Brady's social capabilities to connect with other peers just aren't there. The wiring isn't in his brain. From a sensory standpoint he feels things differently and this took me a long time to understand, but he would, I would wake up, or after he got out of the crib, He would go into our couch, we have these big, down, heavy cushions on our couch, and I would find him wedged in between the back of the couch and the cushion.
And it's because he needed that pressure, he needed that sensory pressure on his body to calm himself down. Hot foods, He , we used to make chicken nuggets for him and I would have to take him out of the the oven and put 'em in the freezer for five minutes 'cause they had to be cooked, but then they had to be room temperature and I never understood that until he was old enough to share the, share the language that he had learned to say, mom, what's room temperature to you?
Is burning hot to me? And so, there are very real differences in the way he feels things, in the way he senses things, in emotional regulation, in very extreme interests. So, when he was two, before we were, we were familiar or had any idea about autism. He was obsessed with the Wiggles. I don't know if you remember the Wiggles, or your kids might be too young to know the Wiggles, but the Wiggles were a group of four Australian men that would sing and dance, and they had other characters on their show.
And, but Brady was obsessed not with the actual show itself, he wanted it playing in the background, but he was obsessed with the DVD covers. So he would take the DVD covers and lay them out, I'm aging myself just by saying DVD covers, I don't know why I sound mad, but he'd lay them out on the ottoman and stare at them intently and finally got to the point where that wasn't enough and he'd pull the insets of the DVD covers out and want me to cut out little pieces of them that he could walk around with.
So he wasn't processing the show. He was getting this very narrow focus on small individual pieces of the show, and so that's another characteristic. So, go
[00:23:04] Hunter: ahead. So did these like you know, my, I can relate to in some degree, my daughter has a chronic pain. situation and feels things very differently and it's been hard to understand and accept that, okay, like, that feels like that to you?
Really? Okay. And I was just wondering, like, and for her, some of her sensitivity led to, you know, she had extreme reactions and big, intense, multiple intense tantrums when she was little and, you know, really was a big driver in the way, made sort of changing, you know, what I was doing too, but like, I imagine one of the challenges with Brady might be the sensitivity would probably lead to, you know, a lot of like like tantrums as like stress relief for him.
Almost like Absolutely. But, but, but that must spinning. Was that something you were dealing with one of the bigger challenges too?
[00:23:58] Kari Baker: Absolutely. And that is just a pure and simple overload like his brain with he is receiving. Signals from the world that I'm, we're totally missing. So if we're in a. in a crowded room, you know, I could still focus on the conversation that you and I are having, even though there's conversations going around around me, there might be an air conditioner, there might be music playing and he has a lowered ability to be able to to kind of filter things out.
So especially in where there was just a lot of sensory input that would send his brain into overload and it would be a true flight, you know fight or flight reaction. And sometimes it was both. He actually, it's kind of one of a very common symptom of autism is that they run and they call it elopement.
But I, when we would be in these play dates sometimes and the kids would be loud and they would have the TV on and stuff like that, I would have to chase Brady to the door. He would try to run away. And then if, if there were you know, transitions that he wasn't expecting, that he didn't, wasn't able to prepare himself for, then the meltdowns would come.
And I think it's, it, that's kind of a, a typical part of, of, you know, Autism, when it's presented in younger children, is that they just don't have any tools to regulate. that overload and to talk them, to be mindful, you know, and to be able to talk themselves down from it. And that's actually a practice that a lot of his therapists from occupational therapists to speech therapists try to institute with their autistic parent patients is to try to take that step back and and.
not allow that your, their brain to just overtake their body and their emotions to such an extent that where, you know, for, luckily for us, fortunately, he was really able to start regulating that at an age where he was still small enough for me to help. But I have friends that, whose children don't have that regulation yet, and when they go into one of those full meltdowns, it, they will get hurt.
I mean, there's a true possibility of them being hurt. And not because the child has, you you know, any kind of you know, antagonistic feelings toward their parent, but they just, it is an impulse that they can't control.
[00:26:34] Hunter: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things that, you know, we want to do, right?
When a kid's having a tantrum, we're just gonna keep them safe, right? Keep other people safe. Cause there's like a lot of out of control things happening, but what if that child is a larger, older child like that? Right. You come up to some major problems that. I mean, just tangentially and sort of maybe anecdotally, how, how are people with bigger kids dealing with that kind of thing?
[00:27:02] Kari Baker: Well, there's medications that are obviously scary to jump into for a lot of parents, but and then it's just, it's therapies. It's trying to, you know figure out what the triggers are, what, what are the things that are causing the overloads and trying to, you know, prevent and prepare for that.
You know, like I said, we're, we've been really fortunate with Brady. He has never you know, Lashed out, you know, I, I actually talk about it in the book, but I was the one that Brady would lash out at when he would have have a meltdown. And that was actually almost a little hard because it was hard for other people to understand that things were as serious as they were.
So my husband would go to work and. Brady and I would have a horrible interaction, and then by the time John would come home, and I'm a wreck, you know, and I almost couldn't even explain how it started, what, what happened, what transpired, but We were able through a lot of parent training to start seeing, okay, what was the antecedent to this?
What was the thing that caused it? What was the behavior that resulted? And then what was the consequence of the behavior? Were we, were we rewarding the behavior by feeding into it more? Or were we you know, kind of making the consequence that the behavior could be de escalated? So, it was It was a lot of education, a lot of parent education for us.
But we're just unfortunate, we are so fortunate. Brady does not have an aggressive bone in his body to this day, and not even emotionally. So, when he is presented with someone who is not kind to him, he doesn't even know how to not be kind back. He just, you know, gets hurt. So, that, that part is hard, too.
But
[00:28:56] Hunter: Well, you know, you just shared so many of these challenges that you had to deal with, that you had to step up to, that you had to that you had to accept, etc. I want to ask in a second about what are maybe some of the gifts that this autistic journey has given Brady, but I'm also curious about you.
From what you're describing, it sounds like you're your stay at home mom. Which is great that you guys had the resources for you to do that, but that could, I mean, staying at home with like, an average, you know, kiddo is insane making. How are you resourcing for yourself through all this?
[00:29:34] Kari Baker: Again I'm so fortunate that my parents were three blocks away.
So even before the diagnosis, my mom, you know, I was a 401k financial advisor for companies. So I did a lot of my work just at home. And then, but then I would go to the company and have meetings with committees and my mom just made herself 100 percent available to take care of him from the time he was a baby.
And and. I don't know how else I would have done it. My mother in law was helpful as well. My sister became, and still is, my, my son's best friend. She's Auntie Kimberly and she, she assumed a whole new persona as Auntie Kimberly once, once Brady came into the world, so. And she provided a lot of support for us too and then, you know, fortunately or unfortunately the pandemic hit and all of a sudden I didn't even have to go out to meetings anymore.
All the meetings went to Zoom and I, but I still needed to be in my office and have somebody, you know, taking care of him and making sure he wasn't running in with his, you know, his immediate needs and that sort of thing, but. I was, I was so well supported but you know, the thing that I've found and through the Kind Families podcast, I've met some awesome companies, and I think companies are becoming more and more aware now that their employee base is dealing with this, because The statistics of the number of kids with autism, ADHD, all of these invisible neurological differences, it's one in five to one in six kids now.
So it is 100 percent possibility, if you have more than five employees, that you have somebody. And a lot of the larger companies are actually creating resource groups for parents of kids with special needs, and also for employees who are neurodiverse themselves, which is fantastic. That's so cool. So I, there's a gal from MasterCard that a friend of mine from college introduced me to, and they have 1, 400 employees in their neurodiversity group.
Resource group. So the, I think companies are figuring out that if they've got good employees that they value and that they want to, you know, keep that they've got to apply some flexibility to work schedules so that therapies can be can be attended. And if there is an emergency at school that someone can get away.
And so I would just say, you know, if you're not working for a company that's got that kind of. flexibility that, you know, there are some out there and that maybe you need to, you know, spread your wings and see if there's somebody that could be a better support for you as a parent and as an employee.
[00:32:22] Hunter: So that's true.
I just did a talk. I do, you know, for, for human resources groups sometimes bring me in to do a talk and yeah, it was a big bank company that also had a employee resource group for Neurodivergent kids. So yeah, that was raw.
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break. [00:33:03] Hunter: How are you dealing with the stress? How are you dealing with the emotional buildup, with the demands on your attention, your heart, your mind. I mean, this is, this is enormous.
[00:33:19] Kari Baker: Yeah. And I will say that through this whole experience it actually was the biggest developer of faith in me. So I know that, you know, a lot of people might not, you know, have faith guiding their steps, but that was something that that became hugely apparent to me in that, in that there was very much, there was design behind who Brady is, and there's design behind who I am, and that I'm Brady's mom.
So I am not I was not paired with Brady as a mom by accident, and I was given all of the tools and resources that I need to be his mom from the fact that he was born. So. I, my faith is extremely important to me but then community is also super important. I mentioned how isolating it was at the beginning of the journey and Brady's occupational therapist gave me a name of a mom who had told her, look, if you ever have a new mom come in with a new kid who was just diagnosed, give her my number.
Oh, that's so great. I was kind of like, oh, do I call? It was very uncomfortable. I'm an outgoing person, but I didn't even have her last name. Her name was Amy, and I just, I was like, Hi Amy Miss Lisa gave me your phone number. And she invited me to coffee with, with three other moms who had kids. I mean, so much like Brady, it was just, it was hysterical, but I, I went and met these ladies for coffee and that was the first time that I felt like I was in a group where they spoke my language.
I felt like, you know, even my best friends and my family, as much as they love me and love Brady and want to be there for me, it was impossible for them to know what the day to day life was like. But these ladies did. And I remember going, we were in a grocery store coffee shop and I mean, within five minutes, I was just crying the whole time because it was just such a relief to hear them tell the stories about their kids that were so much like mine.
And. it was, they became a real lifeline for me. And you know, now 10 years later, there are so many resources that are out there for parents that have kids with special needs. There's communities. One gal I interviewed on the podcast has a network of about 3, 000 moms nationally and they have connection circles for parents of kids with any kind of disability that's a support group.
There's autism or there's Facebook autism mom pages for your communities. There's in our community we have a organization called Southwest Autism Resource and Research Corporation. And they have a mom support network, so, you know, therapists, I, I, I just, I, I highly, highly recommend if anybody's going through this, you know, don't wait for that piece of it after you get all the things, therapies and everything lined up for your kids because that piece of it, number one, you'll get tons of ideas from the other moms.
Some of them will be good and some of them maybe not so good. I've, I've chased after a lot of things during Brady's 10 years of after the autism diagnosis that I laugh about now, but it, they will give you that sense of, of community that you need when you're going through something like this.
Just like, I'm sure for your daughter, you know, something that she's going through that, you know, that I don't have, I wouldn't have any experience with, so I could sympathize with it, but I couldn't, you know, tell stories that would resonate just directly to your heart about that. And that's the same thing that, that any mom needs to do who's, who's facing those challenges.
[00:37:06] Hunter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And dads too. You guys are in there actually. We're not, we're not leaving you out. You, we, you're dealing with these challenges too. I mean, that, that sounds, I'm, I've had you know, ages ago, ah, I kind of forget his name. But I had the director of the Fire Mountain Resource Center for kids who are really struggling.
Kids who are, you know, dealing with drugs and suicide and things like that. But anyway, the one, you know, I asked him at one point, I said like, well, what's the best thing we can do to prevent our kids forever? Seeing someone like you in lives, right? He said, and his advice was to have other parents to talk to and to have that support network.
'cause it's like the, one of the most essential forms of self-care. To just know that we're not alone and just the relief that we feel. It's so essential to human survival, right, that we not be alone, and so the relief that we feel is so, so enormous and that, I'm so, I'm so glad that, that you found that.
You know, you, I, I, I don't want to leave this part out, like, your, Your son's autism, I assume, gave him some, some gifts that made him special and different from other kids. Do you what are those things? Because I imagine there are parents who are dealing with all those challenges, those early challenges and they, it can be a scary picture, right?
It can be a bleak picture, but I know that's not just challenges. There's more. So anyway, I was curious if you could share some of that too. Absolutely.
[00:38:38] Kari Baker: Absolutely. Well, Brady is, has always been creative. I mean, he's, it's interesting because there's a lot of focus, I think, in the autism community about STEM, you know, about, oh, they're going to be computer programmers or mathematicians or something.
Not my son. Math is not his favorite thing. But he is super creative. He loves to write. He loves to write creative writing stories. I mean, from the time he was, probably old enough to hold a pen in his hand and draw. He would draw these cartoonish type pictures and write stories. We would make a book, you know, take the pieces of copy paper and fold them over and staple them, and that would be his book, and he would write his book.
And that turned into probably 150 stories that he's written since he was a kid. And, and the older he gets, the more engaging and kind of complex the stories have gotten, which has been really fun to watch.
[00:39:30] Hunter: And he, he wrote the foreword to your book.
[00:39:35] Kari Baker: He did. And he, he, you know, and he did that in one draft.
So I didn't even really tell him what to do, but he knew about the book. And of course, you know, I couldn't have written this book if he wasn't okay with me telling some of the stories. in it. But he went and he brought it back and he said it in front of me. I'm like, that's perfect. That's exactly what I was looking for.
So but he is absolutely obsessed with movies now. Thankfully he's moved past the wiggles. And he is now very firmly planted in movies but, but very granular in the movies. So he, he is a movie critic and he goes in and when he watches something he writes reviews that go into the cinematography and the editing and the character development and all the things that I don't, catch when I watch a movie.
And then he's got a memory like a steel trap, so he will bring up to me a movie that we watched three years ago and he'll go, Mom, remember in the movie when such and such did this? And I'm like, no, buddy, I don't remember that at all. You're the only person I, I know who could remember that. So so anyway, he's got a great sense of humor.
I think, I think he could have some musical talent, but he's more into the movies and he doesn't want to develop that now, but and he's just a loyal, sweet kid. So, you know, the thing that I wanted more for him than anything was just that he would have a friend, you know, that would really, you know, Bonding with him.
And that those friendships would be important to him. And over the course of his life, he's met a couple of boys that, one of one of whom is on the spectrum as well. And the other who's not, but they are like two peas in a pod. And Yeah. It is, you know, those kinds of relationships for him. I watch him try to savor or, or take care of his friend's feelings over and above his own.
So I know that he has this level of compassion that I know probably most 13 year old boys don't have. So, yeah. He's, he's just, he is somebody that I've never met an adult who has met him who doesn't love him. And we've got to work on the other teenage kids so that they can understand him.
Because he is, he's not doesn't have a typical personality. He's quirky and he's, but I think anybody who takes the time to get to know him will just love him as much as everybody else does. So.
[00:41:59] Hunter: Yeah, I think it's interesting like how things are changing, you know, our, our picture of what autism is like, you know, we hear stories like Brady, people are so creative and have incredible memories.
I just saw that one a woman, a young woman with autism just. Barr exam and is the first lawyer with autism, which is so cool. You know? And I think that as we accept these differences and, you know, and, and work with them and help them and not pathologize this so much, it's, it's. It's really, you know, things are changing.
It's in a, in a really beautiful way. I agree. So, what advice do you have for parents of newly diagnosed kids with developmental and neurological differences that would have maybe helped you back then?
[00:42:50] Kari Baker: Well, from a, you know, the best advice I ever heard, and I can't, I wish I could remember who told it to me, but it was that, number one, your kid is the same the day after the diagnosis as the day before, so just because this diagnosis is now in your hands does not change who that child is, what their heart is what their brain can do.
It doesn't limit their capabilities or their future. It just means that you're going to need to start to really strengths that your child has and develop those as much as you can. So, you know, we learned early on math wasn't Brady's thing. I'm not going to go push him to go, you know, be a mathematician.
I'm going to try to develop the creative side. I'm gonna help him, you know, get a, a. a camp at a theater or do something like that that's going to develop those strengths that he has while also trying to help him develop the skills that maybe he's not so good at yet, but that are required to be able to function really well in the world that's not made for him.
So I would definitely say reach out to community and, and try to to build that support group around you. The other thing I would say is don't put off an evaluation or a, a diagnosis is It, that is your game plan. So it is not a death sentence. It's not something that you should avoid. That is your roadmap for how you can help your kid have the best possible life.
Because once you have that in hand, then you can go start getting that, the help that your child will need. So I see. Time and time again, and it absolutely breaks my heart, it's one of the things that gets, gets me even a little angry, is when parents recognize that something is going on with their child, but they don't do anything about it.
Because the earlier you can get interventions in some of these behaviors and patterns the more help you can give them. And if they don't do anything about it, I've, I've been acquainted with families who, you know, were asking me for referrals to, to developmental pediatricians or psychologists when the kid was five and 12, they haven't done anything.
And the kid is reeling and he doesn't know why he is. so different than the other kids. He doesn't know how to manage his emotions. He doesn't know all of these other symptoms of his neurodiversity are, are just raging war in his life. And so that, that's my other thing. Don't be afraid of the diagnosis.
That is your roadmap to know how best to help your child.
[00:45:35] Hunter: So I think that's great. Yeah. I mean, the more awareness, the better, you know, I mean, yeah, there's going to be things to process and, you know, but yeah, you can't, you can't go into if we were in denial, it's not going to help anything. No, that's for sure.
Carrie, it's, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you. And I, I've been on your KIND Families podcast. Carrie is the host of the KIND Families podcast and tell, I'd love for you to just Let people know about your book and where, where they can find you. Absolutely.
[00:46:09] Kari Baker: So the book is “Finding KIND” and it's discovering hope and purpose while loving kids with invisible neurological differences. So that's the KIND acronym: Kids with Invisible Neurological Differences. Yeah, great, okay, good. So KIND is very much, you know, any kid that looks just like any other kid but has, definitely has some different wiring going on in their brain.
So it doesn't necessarily need to be autism, it's ADHD it could be anxiety, it could be sensory processing, executive function. OCD, like all of these things that are just invisible to someone who would just meet your child on the street, but are real things that are going on in the way and, you know, maybe interfering or certainly impacting the way they are relating to the world.
So that's where, where kind comes from. And then the kind families podcast, I just try to interview people like you who have really good, helpful things to share with other kind families. Whether it's providers or therapists, and sometimes it's just going to be other moms that relate to the path that they're on.
And then finding kind has been a a journey for me. I started writing it in 2018, actually. I loved about the process kind of I went through to really accepting Brady for who he is and all the wonderful things he can do. And in 2018, I wasn't there yet. So I wrote a lot of the stories then and then last year had the opportunity to sell my business and really focus on kind.
and it really turned into and morphed into this story about, you know, certainly becoming awakened to his neurological differences and then adapting to life with a neuro diverse child and then accepting him for who he is. And there's just some really fun stories about Brady and all of the really amazing things that he's done and continues to do.
So that's the heart behind it. And then KindFamilies.com is the website
[00:48:23] Hunter: All right, so go find Finding Kind anywhere you like to find books and listen to the podcast. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you again, Keri, I've really enjoyed it, and thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. Thank you. Thank you so much
[00:48:40] Kari Baker: for having me, Hunter. Appreciate it.
[00:48:47] Hunter: Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Can you relate? Yes, if you can, or maybe you have a friend who can, you might want to text that friend. Text the friend about the show today and tell somebody who could use it. And maybe you've been enjoying a bunch of episodes, please, you know, a review from Apple Podcasts would be great.
You can just do it right on your phone. You can click a button right on that purple app and leave a review. It's really, really easy. So yeah, this is the second one in the “Different Brains, Amazing Kids” series. Make sure you go back and listen to “Misconceptions About ADHD Kids” with Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart from last week.
And I hope this is helpful for you. I hope this has helped understand your kid, build awareness, build awareness for yourself, and maybe just feels heard, I hope. Yeah, this is so hard. It's so hard when our kids are, you know, sort of neurotypical, forget about when they're neurodivergent, so much harder. So maybe this week, give yourself a break. Let yourself rest if you can. I wish you time. Just taking a nap or having some delicious chocolate or reading a novel. Something that's not even parenting related. I hope that all that stuff for you. Okay, dear listener, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. We will be back. We have another episode of the “Different Brains, Amazing Kids” series next week with Exclamation Point Kids with Jess Trayser.
See you next time. So be sure to tune in for that, and I'll be back. I'll talk to you then. See you soon. Namaste.
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