SEO Title (col B) An Autism Mom’s Story: From Frozen and Afraid to Calm and Confident (Ep #158)
Tag (col C) Coaching
New Notes (col E)
When Rachel Eerdman came to Lisa, she was at her wit’s end. Her kindergartner had gone from “quirky and funny” to screaming profanities at school, getting kicked off the bus, and prompting a visit from the school resource officer, and Rachel found herself frozen, blankly staring at teachers and aides with no idea what to do next. In this episode of The Autism Mom Coach, Rachel shares how coaching helped her trade shame and panic for confidence in just a few weeks, and the ripple effect it had on her son Leo and her whole family. It is an honest, hopeful conversation about seeing behavior as information, dropping the apology spiral, and becoming a genuine advocate for your child.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How Rachel moved out of the “freeze” response and learned to read her son’s behavior as information rather than evidence that she had ruined him or failed as a parent.
- Why letting go of shame and the urge to apologize to everyone (and refusing the outside pressure to punish a child who “never met a consequence he cared about”) freed Rachel to build a reward system that actually worked for Leo.
- How a mother’s regulation shifts the energy of the entire family, and why being genuinely on your child’s side, even over an arbitrary rule about sticks, makes you a better advocate than worrying what the school or strangers think.
About the guest: Rachel Eerdman is a working mom of two boys in Michigan and a former one-on-one client of Lisa’s who now mentors other moms in the group coaching community. Her younger son, Leo, is autistic, and her story traces her shift from frozen and overwhelmed to calm, confident, and advocating with clarity.
Resources mentioned:
Related episodes:
- When to Push Your Autistic Child and When to Back Off (Ep #167)
- Moms Like Us: Raising Autistic Twins Through Meltdowns (Ep #45)
Listen Here
Transcript
You are listening to episode 158 of The Autism Mom Coach, From Frozen and Afraid to Calm and Confident with Rachel Erdmann. Welcome to the Autism Mom Coach podcast. I am your host, Lisa Candara. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with autism.
In this podcast, I am going to share with you the tools and strategies you need so you can fight like hell for your child without burning out. Let’s get to it
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I am so excited for today’s episode because I am bringing you an interview with one of my clients, Rachel Erdman. When Rachel came to me, she was completely at her wit’s end. Her son was struggling with major behavioral challenges at school, and she felt frozen, not knowing what to do next.
In this episode, she shares with you her journey, how coaching helped her regain her confidence, and the incredible transformation she has seen in herself and her son in just a few weeks. I hope you enjoy All right, Rachel, welcome to the podcast. I am so glad to have you here. Could you just take a minute and introduce yourself to the audience?
Hi. I am happy to be here. I am Rachel, and I am a mother of two little boys, one who is nine and one who is six. The little one is the one that is on the autism spectrum. And we live in Michigan in the Midwest, and I and my husband both work full-time and are also full-time parents, of course. And our kids are in kindergarten and third grade, so it’s very busy, and in two different school districts.
Oh, wow, that is a busy. Okay. Tell us a little bit about how you found me, what you were looking for, and how we came to meet. Yeah, absolutely. So I think for us, we had been, like many families, pursuing the autism diagnosis for quite a long time between that first suspecting, seeing your family doctor, getting a referral, getting on 100 wait lists, all of that, for quite some time.
So by the time my son was diagnosed when he was four, I believe, it just felt like a relief that we finally had some answers and that we could move forward with a plan. They were like, “Here’s some things you can do.” We got in right away. In fact, we got him in for ABA therapy so quickly that they were like, “We’ve never seen someone go from diagnosis to sitting in our office this fast.”
And so we really were action-oriented, and that was great, and it was great because he wasn’t in full-time school yet, so they obviously had more openings ’cause we weren’t looking for after-school hours, all that. So that moved along really fast and started going really well. And so for about a year, that was just blissful and happy.
And I think that I had, as a parent, maybe a late, a late adjustment or realization of what his diagnosis really was gonna mean for his life. It was like we were just so relieved to have answers that I didn’t really think about how this was gonna affect his schooling further down the line and all of that.
So he started a young fives program, a school, but he was only going part-time and still going to ABA, and, and that was going okay. And so when he started kindergarten this past year, I thought, “We’ve done all these things. We’re prepared.” I didn’t really expect it to be such a huge hurdle, but the expectations were just high enough or more on him that he really, all of a sudden we were seeing what his diagnosis really meant.
So he had a very rough start to starting kindergarten this past fall. And so- So what did that rough start look like? He was going to school and just saying bad words, not just in, like, conversation, but just screaming them, screaming other profanities, other sort of things that he knew were inappropriate to be yelling at school.
So he was having a lot of behavioral issues at school. He was also doing this on the bus to the point where he eventually got kicked out of the bus, and it was great because we already had an IEP in place from the year before, so we were able to really quickly pull that team together and say, “Oh, okay.
Leo’s gonna need different things this year than he did in the past year.” But it was still feeling like the fall is also my busiest time for my full-time job, and I travel quite often in the fall, and so all of that combined, I was feeling incredibly burnt out, and I just didn’t know what to do. How could I help?
And the kid that they were seeing at school was not the kid I was seeing at home, and he is such a lovely, amazing, charming boy that I was feeling really bad and almost guilty that I was sending this little ticking time bomb into school when I was getting a much better version of him. But I couldn’t figure out what to do, so I started asking around.
I think I had vaguely somewhere in my earlier life s- saw that there were some parent coaching or some groups out there, and so I just reached out to my social network and was like, “I’m at my wit’s end.” In fact, I was so unserious about it that in the same post, I also asked about recommendations for renting a limo for my older son’s birthday, and then I was like-
“Oh, and also, d- does anyone have, know an autism parent coach?” Because I just didn’t really know. I was just grasping at straws, and some folks started giving recommendations and giving suggestions, and then actually someone had suggested you, and when I went to look you up, I realized I was already following your social media.
That’s how we got connected. So you said you were at your wit’s end at that point. Can you describe why that was? Because it had been a year or so since he had been diagnosed, and you had been going through the therapy. What at that point caused you to be at your wit’s end? Until that point, everything had been progressing so smoothly.
His sort of autism was just presenting more as quirky, funny, odd. Nothing alarming, nothing where we were feeling concerned. And then it was like a switch just flipped, and all of a sudden he was saying threatening things, talking about weapons, using all this profanity, and in a way that wasn’t as cute as when he was two or three, he used to say, “Oh, damn it” all the time, and, “Oh, that’s funny.
Ha ha ha.” And now it was in a way where at one point during all of this, the school resource officer, who was a real sheriff, had to come to our home and check that he didn’t have access to guns, and I just never would have imagined I would find myself in that situation, and I just felt like I didn’t know how to proceed.
It was way outside of my normal parenting repertoire. Yeah. And I remember when you first came to me, you would say, “I don’t know what to do,” and that you would just freeze. Yeah, exactly. And which was really strange for me, ’cause as a person in my 40-plus years of life, I am really decisive. Making decisions and knowing what to do next has never been a problem for me, and so that was such a weird place to find myself.
And so when his teacher or his aide or the sheriff or anyone was talking to me, I found myself just blankly staring at them, having no idea what I was supposed to be doing with this information. It’s like being in a different world, right? Absolutely. So just tell us like a little bit about when you got started with me, what you were hoping to get out of it, and what you did get out of it.
Yeah. Like I said, so I really had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I scheduled the consultation. Even after the hour-long consultation, I felt better. So I knew that this was the right thing for me. I was like, wow, just the questions that you were able to ask to try to get me out of that freeze, to start thinking about looking at his behavior as information versus I’ve ruined him, he’s never gonna be able to accomplish anything, people are always gonna be scared of him, he’s always gonna be in this sort of fight or flight that he was in.
I learned to take that information in and really figure out what that was telling us. That was information. So that was super helpful. Like I said, even just after the consultations, there was no question that I was gonna do the coaching program. I was exactly… I needed someone to help me figure out, stop panicking.
That’s what I wanted to get out of it, and that is what I got out of it. I was able to pretty quickly… I think one of the great things is that you were always available. We had individual coaching once a week, then there was also group coaching once a week. So I really committed myself to attending those very regularly and being super engaged with that, ’cause I was like, “Okay, if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna just go all in and really get my money’s worth and, and get my kid in a better shape.”
I did that and, and that’s exactly what I was able to get And the other thing is, for me, I was in a place where I was constantly feeling like, oh my gosh, I should be sending the whole school faculty lunch. I should be sending them apology cards. I was just feeling like such a burden. And one thing I’ve gained from the coaching was that the thing I need to worry about is my son.
They are all grownups, they are all adults, and they will take care of themselves. I was very lucky that even his classroom teacher said that to me. She was like, “You do not need to worry about me. I go home at the end of the day and I spend time with my family. Let’s just get Leo in a place where he’s learning and functioning better at school.”
I think that was super helpful as well, to be like, “What’s my focus? My focus is my kid. There’s very little I can control here, and I certainly can’t control how the school secretary is feeling about my son.” Yeah, and I remember… I think the, the biggest growth that I saw in you within a couple of weeks is that you went from feeling, I think, a lot of shame about how he was behaving, as if it was a reflection on your parenting or on who he was, and there was a lot of apologizing, too.
And so I noticed that between us meeting and the incident with the school bus, and then there was an incident a couple weeks later with the OT room, and you were a different person at that point. The way you handled that, I thought, was very differently Yeah, absolutely. I think when he first was kicked off the school bus, I just w- couldn’t stop crying.
I was so ashamed. I was thinking, “What kindergartner gets kicked off a school bus? Where did we go wrong?” And I just was crying. I was Googling, like, “Am I having a nervous breakdown?” Like, “How do I know?” Just really upset. And then something that you told me, and I, I have repeated probably 100 times since then, is, “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.
He is an autistic kid acting autistic.” That alone is just so helpful because it’s, okay, he’s doing what his brain is programmed to do, and, like, we need to work on making the rest of the world a little easier for him so that he can be more regulated. So I think that was super helpful. And then yes, there was a time partway into the beginning, or pretty close to the…
a couple weeks or a month into beginning coaching where I got a call from school that he needed help, and I thought there was, like, a medical emergency. They didn’t tell me much information. And so by the time I got to the school, I found out that he had a real big kind of blowup in the OT room, and he had literally thrown all the shelves open, everything off the counter.
It took hours to clean this up. That was the great thing, too, is I didn’t know. I think we had maybe coaching scheduled in a couple of days, and so I had just texted you to say, “This happened. I don’t re- You sent me a picture … very out of character. I never would have imagined this would be my child. What do I do?”
And you called me instantly, which was really great, and something that I didn’t even realize was part of the coaching. I didn’t know that there would be that sort of one-on-one, like, immediately emergency service. So that was really nice for me to know that I had a place to go. And now, even though I’m out of the three-month beginning package that I had, it’s awesome because on the app and in the group, I can still go to you and the other parents, other moms, for that same sort of thing if there is something that’s, “Oh, no, this just happened” when I start to feel myself freezing again.
Although luckily, I feel like the freezing is far behind me, although I don’t wanna challenge the Earth or anything to, uh, send it my way, but yeah. Yeah. No. So what Rachel’s talking about is, first of all, I work full time as an attorney, so I only take on a few select clients at any given time. But with the clients that I do take on, I give them what I like to call concierge service.
So like Rachel said, if you are having an emergency, the school called or something like that, and you need my support, you will get it. And also, as part of the service that I offer to my one-on-one clients and my alumni clients is a group program where we have a membership app where folks can ask for support, they can share their wins, and we also do weekly group coaching.
And so Rachel, in a really short time, I went from seeing you being someone who was coming for very specific help to someone who’s also a fantastic mentor to the other moms as well. The group is such a great benefit, and it’s something that I, when I was doing my original reach-out and then some research on different coaching options, w-was really seemed pretty unique to what you had to offer.
And that was one of the reasons that I was, especially after having such a good consultation call, I was like, “Okay, this is what I need” because I am a real joiner. I’m a real community-minded person. So the fact that there’s this community of other mothers all across the country has been super helpful, and just it makes you feel warmth.
It makes you feel a more understanding. Recently had a, a conversation where almost everyone on the phone was like, “Oh, we all realize that our husbands are all autistic.” And so I was like, “What a, what an amazing…” No other circle of women are you gonna have that- Right … that same conversation. So that was just like…
I was like, “Oh, just for nothing else, this conversation was worth, was worth all of this.” So it’s really fantastic, and I look forward to those group calls and connecting with those women. You talked a little bit about how you changed as a parent during this time of, of our coaching. Can you just talk a little bit more about how the coaching you received and the changes that you were going through impacted your son with autism and your family just more broadly?
Yeah, I have to say I did not realize pre-coaching how much mothers, or my, in my family in particular, but probably in a lot of families, my energy, my attitude, the way I was handling things was impacting all four of us, right? Like, and because I was feeling so burnt out and so lost, everybody was feeling that way.
And I could see within days of me getting to a little bit of, of a better place that the whole energy of my family changed. So I think it impacted all family members, and particularly I think for Leo. One thing I was having a real hard time with was I felt like I was getting a lot of external pressure from school, from family members to, if he’s doing this, what’s the consequence?
What’s the punishment? How are you gonna change the behavior if you’re not punishing, consequencing? This is a child from day one who never met a consequence he cared about. Like, he could care less. And so he can’t destroy the OT room and then come home and watch Paw Patrol. But one thing that I really came around to was like, this is my kid and this is…
He is a unique person, and we’re going to find ways to help improve his behavior that actually work. I’m not gonna yell at him, I’m not gonna put him in a timeout just because that’s what I’m, quote, supposed to do. And through our coaching and conversations, we were able to come up with a reward system that really worked for him.
He really loves to go out and do outings in the community, go to a park, go to a bounce place. His full name is Leonidas. There’s a little town in Michigan called Leonidas, he really wanted to visit there. So anyways, he made this whole list of places, and then every day that he had good behavior at school and a couple other things, he could earn points toward going to those places.
And he loved it, and we’re still doing it now, five, six months later. And so that was really a huge shift for me to get out of, how else do you motivate kids but to punish them? Even though for the whole six years of his life, even before the diagnosis, that never worked. That has changed greatly. He’s having so many better days at school.
When we talk to the people at school at pickup, it’s more of the out of the ordinary to hear that something went wrong. Even yesterday, his teacher posted a bunch of photos of the kids working on a math thing. Usually when she posts photos of the whole group, Leo’s off in the corner doing his own thing.
He was right there with the group, smiling, laughing, and so it’s like I’m sending- Wow … a different kid to school. Amazing. Yeah. And I remember one of the big things that we worked on early on is, like, when I get this report- Do I lecture him when he comes home from school? Do I have to have this conversation with him?
And I think you knew pretty instinctively that wasn’t helpful or working, but there was that outside pressure of, “How else do I deal with this?” And I think one of the other things that we’ve also talked about that is so clear with Leo, ’cause he’ll tell you, he’s a very honest child, is there’s always a reason for the behavior.
And I remember there was this one example of him running out of the classroom, which was panicky to everybody else, but he had such a clear reason why he was doing it, and just being able to understand that and being able to investigate with him more instead of going to the punishment. Exactly. Once I started to realize that, like, of course, occasionally there’s defiance, like all kids test limits, but once I realized that the behaviors weren’t defiant, and the way I realized that was from him, because he is a really honest kid.
So when you say to him, “Why did you do that?” Most of the time he’ll tell you an answer. But in the classroom setting when… And I get it, there’s all the other kids, there’s all sorts of other things going on, no one is stopping to ask him, “Hey, why are you doing this?” They’re just trying to stop the behavior, but we need to slow down and ask that why, because it gives us so many answers.
So yeah, that example was he would always run out of the classroom, and of course eloping is, like, a scary thing, and, like, they, they don’t want him to leave. And the reason he was leaving is down a different hallway, one of the teachers had a couch outside of her room, and he was like, “I just wanted to lay down.”
And so I was like, “Leo, maybe if you told them, like, ‘Hey, I’m feeling tired. Could I have a rest? Could I have a break?’ They might not say yes, but at least they’ll understand.” And they’re very accommodating. If he were to ask them that, they would be like, “Sure, go sit and have a little break.” And then that would avoid the problem in whole Yeah.
One of the funny things I love about Leo is when we figured out how to do a reward system that would be motivating to him. Just a couple of things on that, because sometimes I have found from my other clients and educators that they don’t love so much our children’s special interests, but I’ve always been of the point of view is like whatever it is, use it however you can.
And you certainly did that with Leo’s love of maps and the flags and things like that. But one of the funniest things I found about him is that if he had a bad day, he would run upstairs and take off his own flags. They don’t have to be perfect. You just- Yeah … you have to try, that sort of thing. He really understands the system deeply, and we’ve tweaked it and because he was earning the rewards too fast.
In fact, even as recently as just this past Friday, he gets hyper-focused on things like I’m sure a lot of the people listening do, and he had collected these little sticks at school, and he really wanted to bring them in. He was about to come home, leaving early that day for his ABA, and there’s this arbitrary rule that you can’t bring nature inside.
So there was huge blowup about it. By the time he got to me, there was mass hysteria about these sticks. I was thinking to myself, the kids, their early preschool days were at like a Reggio Emilia school, which is similar to Montessori, and I was thinking like, “Why can’t he bring these sticks inside? They could count with the sticks.
They could learn about trees.” I didn’t understand, and so I could see why he didn’t understand that this rule about not bringing these sticks inside didn’t make any sense. And so he’s like, “Why would I follow that rule?” He just wanted these sticks, and I said to him, “The teacher has said the consequence is that you can’t have the sticks, and that’s their choice.
I will go outside with you and help you collect more sticks because I agree with you. If you want these sticks, you can have these sticks.” And so that’s the other thing I think I never would have. I never- Yeah … would have had the guts to say that or do that because I would’ve felt so much shame that my kid was causing this scene in the middle of the school office.
And instead I was just like, “You promise him the sticks” and I had become much better advocate for him instead of worrying about what the school or other adults out in public think To learn that when he’s this young is such a valuable thing. I don’t know that I learned that when it was- Ben was that young, because I went to Catholic school, so you did things because you were told to.
And arbitrary rules were just life, right? And you just did it because. And one thing I learned about Ben, and I’ve seen this in other children of the moms that I coach, our children do not like arbitrary rules. Just because rule, they’re like, “No.” And they’re so right to have that curiosity, and we’ve had it trained out of us in some ways.
And so being able to, like, see the world through that lens has been so opening to me. It’s, you’re right, that is an arbitrary rule. It doesn’t make any sense. Like, you’re not wrong. And sometimes I would even say to Ben, “You’re not wrong, and we’re still-” Exactly. That’s- “… gonna have to do this thing.” Yeah, that’s kind of exactly what I try to say.
But just being able to have that conversation, I am on your side, but you’re still gonna have to do this thing or not do this thing. Yeah. And I felt so good being able to be, like, genuinely on his side. I wasn’t embarrassed at all. I was like, “You guys caused this. I don’t understand how you let this get to this point.”
Like, I just want to get this kid in the car and get out of here. I am a way better mom be- because of it. And yeah, I felt like I was, like, channeling you. Like, what would Lisa do? What would- What should I… Who should I show up for as Leo’s mom in this moment? And it was like, I care about what Leo is going through.
Yeah, and that’s, like, such a big thing. I think we all go through that, of that feeling of being on display in front of other people for something that’s happening in the moment or a decision that we’re making. And you can get really frazzled when you have all of that in your mind, and if you’re just focusing on what’s the next right thing for my child, it gets a lot clearer.
Yeah. And another thing that I’ve learned from the coaching and from Leo is that these things will pass. Like, it feels horrible in the moment, and I used to hang on to it for days and just feel this sinking feeling. And even using this example from this past Friday, like, within 20 minutes he was over it, and you would have thought it was the most important thing that ever happened.
Now, it took me a little longer. It took me a few hours. Yeah, for sure. And I was really upset. But before the coaching, that would have taken me days to get over, and I would have been emailing, and I would have been on a panic spiral. Learning from him that, okay, this happened, but, like, the rest of the day doesn’t have to be ruined, and then learning in coaching about how to be confident in the way you handle a situation has really changed a lot of my behavior.
Yeah. And it’s amazing because the thing is no amount of coaching or any sort of tool or strategy is going to change the fact that challenges are going to happen. But when you have these tools and you practice them, you recover so much faster, which is nice because I remember with my son, he’d be fine and I would be holding on to something for days, and it would just, it would sink me.
Yeah. And that’s not fair to him or the rest of the family that I’m feeling like… And he’s like totally forgotten about it. He like, I dropped him off at his ADA and he was like, “Have a great rest of the afternoon.” And here I am like, “Oh, no.” So I wanna ask you now of going through the coaching and being in the program for a bit of time and having exposure to other mothers, how do you show up differently to the world?
And why I ask this is because I think that we are the first example of what autism acceptance looks like, and so I’m just curious about how that shows up in your day-to-day life. You’ve talked about it a bit about at school, but, like, just in other areas if you’ve seen some differences And that’s something we talked about in coaching too, which I think is another thing.
Autistic kids behave autistic. That’s just logic. It’ll happen. Yeah. Yeah. A- and, and similar to what you just said, like such a truth that like kind of whacked me in the head when you first said it. If I don’t accept that this is who he is, how is the rest of the world? And so I think I’m a very open person in general, but I’ve become much more open about here’s what the struggle of raising an autistic child looks like, here’s how it impacts our family.
Here’s also the benefits. Here’s also the awesome things we’re getting. This past weekend I learned about two geographical phenomenons that I never would’ve learned, and I was like, “Where did you learn that?” He just is constantly learning. He’s so focused when he likes something, like right now it’s maps and space and the world.
And I think I am just, I’m much more ready and willing to talk to folks. Like we had started a new session of swimming lessons, and it was chaotic, of course, and so the kids are in the water and I can see that the swimming instructor, he’s really good with Leo. And so I’m like, “Okay, I guess I don’t need to say anything.
Everything’s going great.” Then the next week it didn’t go as well, and so he was talking to me after the class, and he was comparing him to his brother ’cause they were in the same class. And, and I said, “They seem to get each other off track, but Augie gets back focused a lot better.” I said, “Leo’s gonna have a little more trouble because he’s, he’s autistic.”
And he was like, “Oh, I thought maybe. I have an autistic son.” That explained why. But I never would’ve had that conversation. I would’ve felt nervous or like I was making some weird excuse for my bad parenting. That felt really good and, and it made me and this instructor have a nice connection that we wouldn’t have had otherwise, so I think it’s great.
Right. Yeah, and I have found that too. For as many awkward conversations I’ve had, I had so many ones where I’ve bonded with people so much more because of sharing. I remember early on when Ben was in kindergarten, he was having a lot of the, some of the same issues that Leo was having, but um, he was really into touching hair.
And so there was this little girl, and he would always be touching her hair. And she would get up, and sometimes he, he pulled it. I was mortified when I find out about this. I contact the father, the parents, and we actually ended up becoming really good friends. But the, one first thing the father said to me, “I am so sorry to hear that your son is struggling like this.”
I’m like, “Your daughter just got her hair pulled out.” And he’s told me that they had lost a son when he was three years old to cancer, and I was so blown away because I was going into this being if they complain a lot my kid could get kicked out, to having a completely different conversation and then relationship.
And so I know that there are a lot of people who are really cautious about telling other people and afraid of what will happen, but I think two things happen, is like other people are gonna figure it out or they’re going to ass- like without information you usually assume the worst, right? And that most people when they do find out, like I’ve had very few bad results from telling people Yeah, I feel like in general, you never regret being open with people.
It almost always only enhances a relationship, and it’s just, like you s- the connection. Like, that’s an amazing story about that family. I just… Yeah, I’ve had so many of those things where, as I shared what was happening with Leo, so many people I went to high school with, people I went to college with that I haven’t spoken to reached out to me individually to tell me about, “Oh, my child has cerebral palsy, so I understand,” or m- and things I had no clue about, and now we have this connection.
I probably could count to 10 the number of situations like that where people are like, “This is what we did,” or m- “My child was… needed to be in an inpatient treatment facility for some anxiety,” or… And stuff, again, that we don’t… I don’t know why we don’t share. I think we, like you said, because if we don’t share, people are gonna make assumptions.
And I, I was hesitant at first, ’cause I was like, there’s all this talk about privacy for your kids, and you wanna make sure. But it’s just who he is. I, I don’t… It, it’d be like me trying to be private about having brown hair. I just have brown hair. No, for sure. And it’s so interesting. Like, I, I know, and I get it, the privacy and the dignity of the child, for sure.
At the same time, it’s Ben’s experiences and everything that he’s been through, it’s… There’s really nothing I could say that would incur any more sort of consequence to him than what already has, right, by, through things that have just happened. It’s to not talk about it and to not have other people know is for other people to not know that they’re not alone.
The only reason I was even open to inpatient hospitalization the first time, that I even considered it for Ben, is because I knew one person who had told me about her son, and she had walked me through it. And because of that, I was like, “Okay, this isn’t the worst, scariest thing ever,” right? There could be good things to come out of this.
But if I had not had that one point of reference, I don’t think I ever would have even considered it. Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s exactly why it’s so important to be open, I think. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your experience. Before we wrap up, is there anything else you wanna say about your experience with coaching, the program, or what you would tell to another mom who was in your situation and she was wondering what to do next?
I think for me, reaching out and getting coaching from Lisa was just really a life-changing thing. Whether it’s that or it’s finding a community somehow, I think that’s really essential and that we do need a village. You can’t raise a child in a bubble, and especially a child that has special needs or a child that maybe your friend group doesn’t quite understand what might be going on with them.
So for me, I would do anything if I could go back and tell myself, like, this is the right thing. It definitely was the right thing. And so I would always encourage other parents to seek this out. I feel much more confident, much more prepared. I am just in such a better place, and so is our whole family.
That’s amazing. Thank you so much. It’s been such an honor to coach you and to get to know you, and then to remain in this relationship through the group coaching program and to have become friends. And so thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experience, and for everything you contribute to the group because, again, you’ve become a mentor to other people in the group.
And I know someone that other people really look forward to talking to on a weekly basis. Thank you so much for creating that space. It’s a really important part of my week as well. Thank you everyone for listening to this week’s episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if anything that Rachel said resonated with you, if you are feeling stuck and need a real practical support, now is the time to book your consultation with me.
You don’t have to figure this out alone, and you don’t have to go days or weeks or months or years struggling. Just like Rachel, you can get quick, life-changing results in just a few weeks by working with me. So to schedule your consultation, go to the link in the show notes or email me at lisa@theautismmomcoach.com.
All right, everyone, I will talk to you next week Thanks for listening to The Autism Mom Coach. If you are ready to apply the principles you are learning in these episodes to your life, it is time to schedule a consultation call with me. Podcasts are great, but the ahas are fleeting. Real change comes from application and implementation, and this is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program.
To schedule your consultation, go to my website, theautismmomcoach.com, work with me, and take the first step to taking better care of yourself so that you can show up as the parent you want to be for your child with autism
