Maintain Your Energy and Productivity As A Special Needs Parent

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we’re talking about how to handle all the things life throws at you when you’re parenting a child with special needs, especially during this increased time of stress and uncertainty in the world. You know, parents with kids with special needs can get easily depleted of energy and time with everything that needs to get done. I’m not telling all of you anything you don’t already know, but there are things that you can do to support yourself and to structure things in a way that you not only survive, but thrive, especially if you are caring for children and trying to work. So to talk to us about her experience as a mom, a coach and a business owner, I’ve invited Faith Clarke on the show today. Let me tell you a bit about Faith. She’s a business strategist and inclusion specialist with a background in computer engineering, education and is completing her doctoral studies in the psychology of new venture teams. She helps socially conscious businesses level up their productivity through their people and processes. Faith especially loves to do this with special needs families by helping them run businesses that create space for people with all abilities. Parenting Like a Ninja: An Autism Mom’s Guide to Professional Productivity, which I have to say is the best book title, ever, is an Amazon bestseller and reflects her own journey with the crazy chaos of special needs parenting and the need to harness energy and be productive. Faith believes that entrepreneurship is a perfect mental and psychological health choice for any special needs parents, and it offers the opportunity to do business differently while creating more of what our communities need. Faith, it’s such a pleasure to have you here today. Welcome to the show!

Faith Clarke:

Hi Nicole, it’s so good to be here! Thanks for having me. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So this conversation couldn’t happen at a better time with everything that is going on with the world right now, and the level of stress and things on our plate as parents has amped up more than ever before, especially for parents who are doing school from home right now. So I’m just so excited to delve into this with you now, I know it’s going to be so helpful for so many people. I’d love to just start by having you talk a little bit about your family, how you came to be focused on this intersection of being a mom in special needs and also the business piece of things. 

Faith Clarke: 

I think you’re right. This COVID period has been like autism crazy leveled up in an unbelievable way. So I’ve had to be pulling out some of my own tools, like wait, what did I do when we went through those hard times. So I have 3 kids. My oldest is 21 with autism. I have a 19 year old and a 16 year old. So it’s a full, hectic situation. As you said, I am both in school and running a business. The balance between taking care of myself, taking care of my business, taking care of the normal life and then meeting the diverging needs of the kids. When they were little, I could kind of keep everybody on the same page. Even with autism, I could kind of force everybody to want the same thing. As they get older, their needs shift so much more and they don’t drive yet. So it’s been interesting because I’ve been finding myself completely close to burnout again.

When I wrote Parenting Like a Ninja, it was the process of stepping away from burnout. It was the process of reclaiming autism intervention in a way that made sense for me versus doing autism intervention based on what the best practices were, because the best practices were going to kill me. Not to mention, I had no money after I did the best practices for one year. So there was this process of knowing myself and figuring out what autism intervention needed to look like for me to be sane, and then leveling that up over time. 

So COVID is kind of bringing that back, and I’m like, okay, what am I supposed to do now? At that point, I was homeschooling everyone. That was sanity for us, all three at home, that was really grounding. Now, my kids are out in school and my adult with autism is home full-time with stuff, so it’s a whole different scenario. The tools look different, and so I’m in that process of figuring that out. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I love that you’re talking about how this evolves and the cycles of things over time as our children grow and age. That we go through these periods where things maybe flow better or things where it’s more challenging and that’s just a normal phase of life, right? 

Faith Clarke: 

Right, exactly. When they were younger, it was more about this elementary early childhood energy that feels like it’s all over the place, even though they physically were in the same place. Now they’re older, it’s the physical. They’re physically in different locations, doing different things and having experiences that I know I can’t control. When they were younger, I tried it, to curate their experiences. Now they’re older, the humility of saying I can do my best to create a nurturing environment and then trust that they’ll go through it regardless of diagnosis and all the things that they can kind of go through it with the tools that they have provided. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That’s a beautiful way of looking at it. I’d like you to comment just a little bit. Your oldest son, Jayden is 21 and he’s nonverbal and has autism. I think that’s important to talk about, because when we use the word ‘autism’, that can mean so many things now. There’s such a wide spectrum, but I really want our listeners to understand the level of challenges that you’ve dealt with and all of the things that you’ve had to navigate.

Faith Clarke: 

Thank you for asking that, because you’re right: The word autism is this mass set of symptoms that seems to range so very much. So Jayden has had two regressions. When he was 6 years old, he had a second regression. When he was maybe 15 months old, he had his first regression. So autism when he was little, under 6, was just nonspeaking, difficulty with some social skills, but he made steady progress through therapy. He looked playful and fun-loving and it felt easy in comparison to what happened when he was 6 and he lost some skills again. And then autism at 6, aside from not having the skills that he gained in the 2-6 year-old window, he had tics and obsessive behaviors and impulse control issues and his language was very staccato, single words repeated and that kind of thing. So, over the years, we’ve dealt with a lot of struggles with basic motor planning.
He can run very well. He runs quite nicely, so eloping is an issue. The home is very well-locked, because if he becomes too impulsive, he may run and that will be running into the street or running into somebody’s home and that could be a really serious situation, and also, when he becomes overwhelmed, the sensory overwhelm became much more difficult to deal with, and then puberty kicked it, which is autism on steroids. 

So in the puberty years, the overwhelm started to look aggressive. I am very cautious about using the word aggressive, because I always say to people aggression is an intent. It’s not a set of behaviors, it’s an intention. So Jayden is not aggressive, but he will jump and scream and jump towards you in a way that many people will find off putting if he feels dysregulated. So Jayden at 21, in contrast to the physical behaviors, he also communicates by spelling and we do lessons with him through spelling. So while with his speech he will say “No” and “Cereal” and “Dinner” and “Eggs”, in his spelling, he will say “My brain feels like it’s going too fast, my thoughts     are going too fast, they need to stop.” And this might be while he’s running around the house in a very agitated way. So that’s what autism looks for us now, and at 21, it settled down a little bit from the puberty years, but it also has an element of — COVID made it weird. So it’s hard right now to figure out, obsessive behaviors leveled up quite a lot, anxiety-looking behaviors leveled up quite a lot and it was very difficult to figure out how we could recalibrate what we’re doing in a way that could be supportive of him. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I think that’s so important to lay that out so that people have a context for understanding what your experience and your family’s experience with autism is, and I think it’s true. A lot of families have felt like the whole COVID situation and all the change that’s gone along with that has really leveled up a lot of the anxiety or obsessiveness or those kinds of issues. I know there are a lot of people that can relate to that. You talked, at the start of our conversation about how when you first wrote the book, and that was maybe a year or two ago, you had felt like you had come to a place where you had figured out strategies and balance and all of that and now you’re having to pull that out again and go, “Whoa. We’re in a different phase”, a new level of exhaustion and demands and all of that.
And I think that many parents are feeling that way right now. So I’d love to have us talk about the recommendations that you have and that you share in the book for supporting just energy levels for exhausted parents.People feel like they’re being pulled in so many directions. What have you found helpful to give you the energy and the stamina to manage everything that you need to manage on a day-to-day basis?

Faith Clarke: 

First of all, it’s my mantra where energy is concerned, I think our bodies are built to create the energy we need, and that’s physical energy and mental and emotional energy. So if I’m giving my body what it needs, and when I say body — of course I am not leaning into the body-mind disconnect. If I’m giving myself what I need, I will create the energy that I need. When I started my process earlier when Jayden was younger and I started to feel really burnt out, it was this process of figuring out where I was not giving myself the raw materials for this energy creation. On a fundamental level, that was things like sleep and not eating well. I found out that Jayden’s body is very similar to mine, or maybe mine is very similar to his. We are related, after all. So much of his digestive issues and stuff like that are mine as well. So on the very, very basic, even before we get into COVID or we get into the nuances of life, I think all of us as parents have to answer this question: Where am I not meeting my needs?

I let go of the need of sleep because that was too hard to work out. Jayden still does not sleep well. And that meant that I had to get much more serious about meeting some of the other needs. I think as parents, we don’t work on the emotional and psychological needs that we have. So fundamentally for me, as a stay-at-home mom/business owner/home-schooler, my cycle of my day ran counter to most of my friends. So my relationship needs were not being met. And as a stay-at-home mom who was previously a professional and worked in academia, that I no longer had an audience, a big audience that I was showing my expertise to meant that my competence needs were not being met. My need to kind of do well and show people I was doing well. Even though I was running a business, it wasn’t at the scale. So I tend to say to women especially, where is the relationship gap? How are we connecting with friends? How do we rebuild those meaningful connections? And then what are you doing that you feel proud of? What are you doing that feels energizing to you? What do you do that feels like you can say, “Wow, I’m amazing!”? And those questions tend to be really, really hard for many special needs moms to answer. That can take us some time. 

I think getting to those answers, I recommend getting really committed to taking time away. I know, I understand the gargantuan effort that it takes to leave the house. If I’m leaving, it feels like I’m doing an entire marathon just to help everything be organized. But the more I do it, the easier it becomes, and the more I do it, the more my family expects me to do it. When I didn’t do it, then everybody knew that I was the person who handled everything. So I started to leave the house every Saturday. This was hard. I would leave the house and just park the car around the corner, just to be physically away from the house. So I’d tell the kids, “Hey, listen. I’m in the driveway.” Some physical distance was how I started. And all I would be doing is listening to my audiobook or listening to some music. Especially a mom that told me that 5 minutes in the bathroom, she would just take her Kindle out and sit on the toilet for five more minutes. 

I think having some clear practices: When are you alone? When are you giving some time to know what you know inside? After we’ve been giving ourselves some time to know, then, there is the “How do I take courage to act on that?” For many of us, for me at the very beginning, the courage I had to take was to stop some of the therapies. After I got to a place where I said, “Enough. No more.” and I stopped some therapies. 

I think there is a stopping, and then there is a knowing, and then there is a taking action that all of us have to do in a very basic way, whenever we find ourselves being depleted. I don’t know if that was too high-level or not specific enough. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That was awesome. I love how you laid that out and what you said at the start of that, that when we give ourselves what we need, we are able to then create the energy that’s needed to meet the demands on us. That’s really a lovely way to say that. The argument that so many parents, moms especially have, when we talk about this — typically, this goes under the heading of self-care, but I like the way that you’re talking about it much more. Typically the argument is “I can’t. I have to give all of myself to my kids.” What you’re saying is no, actually, you don’t have what you need to give to all of that if you’re not taking a little bit for yourself, and I think that that means so much more coming from you as the mom of a child with substantial special needs and other children and running a business, to hear you say this is true. 

Faith Clarke:

And I think too, I had to think about what I was modeling for my son with special needs and for my kids, generally speaking, right? Everyday we ask Jayden to do things that are very hard for him. Things that take a phenomenal amount of energy and capacity. I’m asking him to do them for himself. I realize that what I was modeling was I would do for you, but I won’t do for myself. And I’m asking you to do for you, for your life. Especially in the teen years, I started to see the hypocrisy when I’m looking at my daughter and I’m saying wait, I’m modeling that loving the people around you means doing for them at the expense of yourself. It became teaching on a whole different level: How do I want my children to live? So a mom said it to me. She said, “My self care is taking care of my kids”, and I’m saying that can’t be. It can’t be that way because then we just bring ourselves to depletion and then we die. And then what?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So true. I think I Want to circle back to what you said when you got to the point of taking action, one of the actions that you decided, one of the changes that you decided needed to happen was to stop a lot of the therapies, to slow down, to simplify with that, and that is something that I talk to parents about so often, but boy, is that a hard thing and a real act of courage to go against the grain, against the mainstream of what parents are told, which is more is better, do all of these things, spend all of this money, run yourself ragged getting your kid these therapies, and it’s hard to step back from that and go, “Wait a minute. What’s really important here?”

Faith Clarke: 

Yeah. It was very hard. I was so grateful for one of Jayden’s therapists who said to me “If he’s happy, you’ve won.” and then a friend of mine who said — because we struggled with potty training for years, and a friend of mine, her son is two years older than Jayden, and she said “What’s the worst case scenario? We do this as long as we can.” And I realized that he can not have a life that is focused on “correcting” and “fixing” everything every single moment of the day. In that particular moment, I was like for 15 of the 24 hours of the day, it can not be that we’re talking about where what goes in the toilet or not, right? So it became about what the fundamental needs were. I think with us, with kids who have expanding and mushrooming lists of goals — every year the list of goals gets more because it just increases, we have to know what’s basic, what the fundamental things are. So I created a hierarchy of goals for Jayden and this is how I trained — in my first business, I was training caregivers for families of kids with autism. I said yes, there is a growing list of goals, but it’s in a hierarchy. Fundamentally it’s self-regulation. 

That means helping the kid to feel safe in their body. I took everything else off the table. Safe in his body. And if that’s all we do, safe in his body, and even below that was healthy food, a healthy environment, that was all. If I want to add to “safe in his body”, then I add “connected to humans”. It isn’t two word conversations and 20 cycles of communication and using adjectives — yes, but just connected to humans. And then, from there, “learning new things”. Once I knew what the hierarchy was, I fired everybody except for who was helping me work on the one thing I was working on. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

You’re speaking my language here, Faith. I love it and I know this is really touching so many of our listeners in a really important way right now, especially in this environment with how most people are being forced to do schooling in therapy with the online stuff. So many parents are contacting me and saying, “This isn’t working, but I feel like I’m forced to do it, like sit in front of the computer, try to get my child to do this. It’s really anxiety-provoking, my child is not engaged, this isn’t working!” But people feel compelled to do things, even when they’re clearly not working. 

Faith Clarke:

Yeah. And when COVID hit, Jayden had just finished school. So the quarantine started when he was in his last year. So they sent me all the things: This is how we’re going to do school at home. I also teach part time in my other two kids’ private school because I realized I didn’t want to let go of home schooling until I sent them out. Anyway, I had two kids at home doing synchronous learning on two separate Zoom devices while Jayden was home, and they wanted me to have him log into the classroom. They gave me handouts for PT. I was like, “No, no. We’re not doing any of that.” Then signing off that this was the way they were going to handle his IEP, I said “No, we’re just not…” — I don’t have the capacity to force Jayden, nor did I have the desire. I thought, “This isn’t good for him. If it’s not good for me, it’s not good for him.” That’s kind of another thing that I kind of tuned into. We’re hyper-wired with each other anyway, maybe we’re a little co-dependent. I was like “No, if it’s not good for me, it’s definitely not going to be good for him.” So I said no. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I’m so glad you shared that. What an important thing for people to take away from this, if nothing else: If it’s not good for me, it’s not good for my child. That resonates so much, and it’s so important for parents to tap into that 

Faith Clarke: 

That’s right. I think we underestimate the value of our being. We think it’s about the things that we do. Right now, this is the dilemma because now that my kids are older, there is so much more to do. My daughter is making decisions about college, and my higher self feels “Yes! I will let her choose the path that’s good for her.” I believe too for her, “Safe in your body.” And she deals with a lot of anxiety. I’m like, yes, this is a great year to prioritize “Safe in your body” and yet, in the back of my mind it’s like, “Okay, but college applications are….” And “should I be…”. So we have to be aware that as the kids get older, this list of things to do keeps coming at us. As the school psychologist was saying, “What do you imagine for Jayden’s future?” I would say, “I am not imagining his future. I am staying present with him now.” And it feels foolish, it feels irresponsible to say that out loud, but it was like imagining for the future when there are no good systems, you are going to drive me crazy. So let me not. Let me do a good job with today. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I love that. I love that. This is awesome. So we’re touching on some things that professionals often do with good intentions, but that are not particularly supportive or helpful for kids and families. I’d love to hear what you think professionals can support parents with, especially in this crisis of exhaustion, of overwhelm. What is a helpful role that professionals can play in that?

Faith Clarke:

I love that question because I end up talking to lots of professionals because of where I sit and because I end up being trusted. It’s unfortunate that parents’ voices aren’t trusted, but I do have the privilege of my voice being trusted. I did a training recently with professionals who handled very at-risk families of kids with autism. I said it’s capacity building that you need to be doing. The list of things that you have, especially many professionals have lists of things that should be done that were given to them by other people. So they’re just a conduit for this. You, a parent, a child, a family needs to go through these steps because X other organization, department of X, social services, whatever, has said so. It’s like this woman who you are speaking to, who is both dealing with a child with disability and other social economical challenges and pandemic and so on, capacity is what she needs. Your list means nothing. She’s not answering your calls because you’re item #57, and I think professionals have to understand that that capacity building can’t be told. It’s a width kind of experience. So if you have two sessions per month to spend with somebody, get rid of the list and be with them as a human to just help them build capacity among the things that they are already working on. 

One of the things that I know for sure for parents and that I share for these professionals is that parents are already solving problems. If a professional can partner with the parent in a problem they are actually solving, and help them build some capacity around that, that’s a win-win. Capacities build as something is worked on together, and they could actually have some space to notice the really important thing that may be on your list. And when I think about capacity, I’m a little nerdy, so I talk about it. If I’m talking with professionals, I talk about psychological capacity, which is the capacity to be hopeful, the capacity to be resilient. Those kinds of things are built in some really specific ways. If we could be, instead of being focused on how many times — you should be spending 20 minutes, 3 times a week playing with your child, or whatever the goal is. Instead of focusing on those goals, we’re like, what are the things that I will be doing with this person to help build their desire to build this capacity in themselves. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yes. So important. The partnering with, and the coming down off of the pedestal that professionals so often put themselves on, right? And to say, “I’m partnering with you. What is most important for you, for your family right now?” Meeting people in the midst of what’s going on in the reality of their life, and I love what you said. Put that list of behaviors and skills and whatever aside, and focus on what’s going on now, and as you said, parents are actively solving problems every minute of every day. We may have opinions about better or worse ways to solve those problems and that’s where we can be supportive of that. And to find out what the problems are that are the biggest for you, how we can build your capacity to solve them, to be resilient, and I love what you said, to have hope that things are going to improve because if there is one thing we know from the research with kids with special needs, it’s having a parent with a sense of optimism that they can and will improve, is far and away the most important thing to the child making progress. 

Faith Clarke:

Absolutely. And I think that when we see that again it’s back to that being. When as professionals we see how this family is being with each other — because the other thing I encourage professionals to think about is not the child, it’s not even the child and the mother, the child and the primary caregiver, it’s this entire unit that’s being affected, positively or negatively about the experience that they’re going through. How can they be and how can we help them be with each other through this? So much more important than one or two of the micro goals, that if we were to be absolutely honest, Nicole, we know that these goals remain on lists for 20-40 years, so really, if we’re just honest, can we get really basic? 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah. Can we focus on what makes a tangible difference in the lives of individuals and parents and families? That’s where it’s at. 

Faith Clarke:

Absolutely. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I love that. So one of the things that you’ve done to find balance and work around and with the needs of all of your family members and your own needs as a woman, as a professional, is this idea of using entrepreneurship, using a business as a way to meet income needs, meet the needs of your kids and it’s such a really creative, meaningful way of approaching that. I’d love to talk to you about how that came about. How can entrepreneurship really be an ideal solution for many families?

Faith Clarke:

So I think what happened with me, aside from the fact that, you know this mounting list of credit card bills that seems to come up as we’re like, “Oooh, solve it this way, hmm, solve it that way. Hmm, camel’s milk.” Or whatever thing you’ve decided to try. So the financial need was there. The reality is that the rigid structures in the current workforce, which thankfully are being crushed. It’s unfortunate to live through the crushing because it is economically very difficult, but the rigid structures of work don’t fit special needs families. They just don’t. So I’ve spoken to so many women who have — either their careers just stopped because they can’t grow the career in the way that the system seems to require, and also be at the drop of the hat for school calling or whatever is going to go on. Or they pulled out of it and now they’re just the person that’s responding to all the needs, but dealing with this sense of not being able to contribute in the way that they would want, or I think more importantly, to their hearts. Not being able to create in the ways that they were able to create before: Create impact, create products, create conversations, create money, whatever. So for me, entrepreneurship is a way that you can take the thing that you’re good at, and for many special needs parents, the things that they’re good at could be the thing that they studies in school or whatever, your professional space, but we become experts at so much more at the drop of a hat. 

We had to. People are saying “I don’t know what to do! I want to help you, Faith, with your son with autism, but I don’t know what to do” and I say “I didn’t know what to do either. It was actually on the job training.” So there is a wealth of value to many parents of many parents of kids with special needs in the workforce now, because they’re highly adaptable, they’re able to handle issues of difference, multiple-perspectives, complex dichotomies that seem like they can’t fit together — a parent tends to be able to do that. So I’ve been encouraging, especially the women, the mothers of kids with special needs to see the value that they know they bring, and to build businesses and services around that value. And my catchphrase is, “If you can do it, even when your kid has not slept all night, that’s me, then you can do it for money. You can sell it.” And lots of women will say “No. I can’t sell something that’s easy for me.” Because we think that the thing that’s easy because we can do it sleep-deprived, we shouldn’t monetize.

But it was like, actually, that’s the thing to monetize. Families like us can’t right now monetize the hard things. At home is the hard thing. The emotional balance that we’re trying to hold and create, that’s the hard thing. So there are things that are easy that we have expertise in right now that we need to monetize to create income and satisfy our hearts. But I think also, lots of the family that I’ve encountered realize that their businesses can create space for their kids.

Now, as you can guess, all the people that went through “How is he going to work, what is she going to do, are they going to accept her? Is there going to be space?” And so families are also creating space so there is diversity, there is inclusion, built into many of these businesses because people are thinking about their families. And it’s much more effective than some cooperation saying, “Oooh, we should be more diverse!” A top-down kind of thought is really different from a business owner saying, “I want/ there needs a job for my son here. How do we do that?”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Absolutely. I have to say that at our clinic, it’s wonderful when we have families come in and they have their own business, because we’re able to, as their kids get older, find opportunities for them within that business. Whatever the capabilities are, whatever the interests are, when there is a family business, it allows much easier opportunities than having to go out there and find something out there where nobody knows them and nobody is interested in making space for them or really having them be successful. So I’ve seen that too where that family business, where that entrepreneurship can be so beneficial as kids get into adulthood.

Faith Clarke:

That’s right. And I think too, that it sets a model. Family-run businesses by families of kids with special needs then have the opportunity to model what’s needed in the wider workforce, because definitely, the crumbling workforce is crumbling because it’s not flexible enough, it’s not adaptable enough. It can not include difference in any way. It’s too expensive to kind of do it by forcing it. What we need are micro-opportunities that are being successful, proof of concept. I love that these family businesses are proving to be that way. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I love that. Can you give a couple of examples just to get people’s wheels turning? People that you’ve worked with or know, the type of business that they’ve started?

Faith Clarke:

So in the Bronx, a friend of mine started a truffles — it was Big Kyle’s Little Truffles. Her son is so into food, hence Big Kyle. She started cooking and baking with him as a way to help him build his competence in the kitchen, but also to pay him for his time in the kitchen, so they worked on money. After a while, she branded it, and he would save towards — he loved to travel, she did too, so then they would say, “Okay, $600 and we’ll buy a ticket to x place”. And so they built this entire learning concept, which is for me what entrepreneurship means. Yes, we’re making money for our family, and we’re doing learning on the ground. It’s homeschooling to another level, as far as I’m concerned. And so it was fantastic just to see how she builds on Kyle’s interests and her own. 

She was a fashion designer before and an artist, so she had this ability to kind of make the truffles beautiful, the boxes were gorgeous and she did that. I’ve seen in the media a family that did a carwash business and then included other kids with autism in the car wash business. I know of a friend in London, again food seems to be a common theme, it was cupcakes. Their daughter was just very into cupcakes, so they found a small space and they set it up. 

Just thinking about this, expanding on the idea, there’s a special need for residential and living spaces. So what one family did that I heard about, they bought a farm. Daughter’s very into farming. This set up a co-op out of the farm. A living co-op. So 5 living units within the house and on the farm, and then they sold the co-ops to other families of kids with autism who were interested in farming. The kids farmed together, went to the local farmer’s market and then staff on the farm are basically people who are both into farming and into special needs support and recreation. So they created life and business together, using that idea.  

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Fantastic. We’ve had families at the clinic too with so many more things available online, like Etsy and eBay and selling things on Amazon. We’ve had several families who had developed businesses out of selling things online and their kids, as they’ve gotten older, like you said, they’ve been able to use it as part of the educational experience, but then giving them meaningful jobs to do within that business as they get older. There has never been a time where there are more options and opportunities that don’t require a lot of money to get started for families who create some of these unique opportunities for themselves. 

Faith Clarke:

Lots of art opportunities. My other two kids are artists, and so I have done things where I use my kids’ art in projects that I’m doing. Then I have Jayden. Though he communicates with spelling, so I’ll ask him a question, and get a paragraph of some wisdom from him, put it with a piece of art and it’s part of a product that’s available to people. I’ve seen how lots of people with their non speaking self-advocates, for printed, for content. And they sell the content or they sell the advice. So I’ve seen kids who become advisor members of communities and are paid for it. Because as a non speaking person, and I say nonspeaking because it’s thought that if your kid isn’t speaking, that’s the benchmark. Your kid needs to be speaking. So if he’s not speaking then you’re not going to be able to do things like these. Yet, with the spelling, I’ve seen people just take a few sentences and it becomes a message that feels like it has so much more meaning. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah. Nonspeaking doesn’t mean non-thinking. 

Faith Clarke:

Absolutely. Right?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I think that’s so helpful to give people some ideas of that. And your point about entrepreneurship, having your own business whether that’s a very small project or a business that supports your entire family’s livelihood or anything in between, the flexibility that’s creating something that is just much more workable and healthy for everybody when special needs is part of the picture. 

Faith Clarke:

Absolutely. I think the big issue for me continues to be when somebody calls me, I need to drop everything and go. So my clients now know this. And then also, with COVID, if I’m working from home and my son is home, I need the people I’m working with to know that Jayden could come right in front of the camera and he could do something and say something and that needs to be okay. So it really brings inclusion. A camera into my home brings inclusion to an entirely new level, and I think we must create and sustain work experiences and income experiences and businesses that say that’s okay, that’s normal, that’s good. It’s good to see what the real life is, what Faith’s real life is. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, absolutely. Faith, you and I could talk for hours. There are so many more questions, you have so much wisdom to offer. I hope that you’ll come back on the show another time so that we can talk about more of these things but right now, as we wrap up, I want to make sure that you have an opportunity to share where people can find out more about your work, your book, what you’re doing. 

Faith Clarke:

I spend an inordinate amount of time on Facebook, which I shouldn’t, but maybe that’s self-care or maybe that’s not. But anyway, if you search for me, Faith Clarke, on Facebook or Instagram, you’ll find me there. Send me a message. faith@melodyofautism.com is my email address, and then faithclarke.com, that’s my website. If you reach out, I have PDF versions of my book that I happily email to people. Yes you could buy it on Amazon too, but if you just want to read a few of the tips, I’d be happy to share it with somebody who might be interested if they heard this conversation. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Awesome, that’s amazing, Faith. Thank you, and we’ll make sure that all those links are with the show notes, as always. Listeners, you can find that on the page that goes with the podcast, on our website, and you’ll be able to get all those links and access that. I highly recommend that you take a loot at what Faith is doing and get her book. Such value, such wisdom there. Faith, I really appreciate you taking time out of what I know is a very hectic and busy schedule for you right now, especially, to have this conversation today. I know our listeners really have gotten so much value from it and I appreciate you taking the time.

Faith Clarke:

You’re welcome. It was my pleasure. I appreciate this, it’s like a pause — because you know, I’m normally running. So I appreciate being able to stop and just talk with you. Thank you. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Awesome. Thank you, thanks to all of you for listening, we will see you back here next week for our next episode of The Better Behavior Show.