THE SJ CHILDS SHOW-Building a Community of Inclusion

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You can have a full calendar of friends, family, and appointments and still feel completely alone as a parent. That’s where this conversation lands: the kind of honest, practical talk that helps you breathe again and take the next step.

We’re joined by Vicky Christensen, a special education advocate and the author of Uniquely, Fully Enough. Vicky shares her family’s neurodivergent parenting journey, including raising a son with an extremely rare chromosome disorder and a younger son with ADHD inattentive type and auditory processing challenges. We unpack what it fee...

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Your kid’s mindset is forming whether anyone teaches it or not, and that’s what makes this conversation so important. We’re joined by Renaye Thornborrow, founder of Adventures in Wisdom, who’s on a mission to bring life coaching for kids into everyday family life, with practical mindset skills that build confidence, self-esteem, and resilience. Renaye shares how she discovered personal development early, then asked the question most of us eventually ask: why didn’t anyone teach me this when I was a kid?

We dig into how she turned tha...

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If everything in your child’s world keeps getting easier, why do they seem more stressed, more isolated, and less confident? That question drives my conversation with Dr. Jonathan Strecker, head of school and author of *Emergence: How Modern Convenience is Dumbing Down Our Children and What Parents and Schools Can Do About It*. We get into the uncomfortable truth that growth usually comes from friction and practice, not from instant fixes, constant entertainment, or outsourcing hard thinking. 

We break down his “five intelligences” lens for whole-child development: intellectual, social, emotional, ethical...

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A wheelchair, a notebook flipped over in a failing math class, and one contest win that changed everything. That’s the origin story Tracee Garner brings to our mic, and it opens into a bigger conversation about disability advocacy, mental health, and the kind of access that lets people actually live their lives.

Tracee is a disability advocate in Northern Virginia and a published author with 22 books, and she’s refreshingly honest about what it takes to keep creating while living with muscular dystrophy. We talk about how community college became the...

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You can feel it the moment someone finally says, “Oh, that’s why.” Amy Jones joins us for a candid, funny, and deeply human talk about living most of her life without an ADHD diagnosis, getting labeled with everything but the real answer, and how that one missing piece rewrote her entire story. We sit with the grief of “what could have been,” but we spend even more time on what relief can look like when you stop treating yourself like the problem and start understanding how your brain actually works.

We also go...

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Theo spent years pushing away his autism diagnosis, and the cost was steep: mental health spirals, substance abuse, and the constant pressure to act “normal” in a world that rarely makes space for sensory needs. When he later works with autistic kids and recognizes himself in them, something shifts. We talk about what it means to accept autism as an identity and a nervous system reality, not a problem to be fixed, and why that acceptance can arrive late but still change everything.

We also get real about stigma and vulnerability. Theo...

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The scariest part of caregiving is not the hard day, it’s the day you’re not there to explain what only you know. When a loved one is non-speaking, has epilepsy, needs sensory supports, or relies on a specific routine, the difference between “they’ll figure it out” and “they’ll care for them well” comes down to details. Joel and Debbie Pearlman built DaniPlan after facing that exact reality with their daughter Dani and realizing that the traditional special needs binder is too static to keep up with real life. 

We talk throu...

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The hardest part of “helping” a family after an autism diagnosis can be admitting that your old playbook no longer fits. Jennifer Kaufman knows that tension from both angles: she spent years as a principal at a school for children with autism through age 21, and she’s also the grandmother of an autistic eight-year-old. When her grandson was diagnosed, expertise wasn’t the missing piece. The missing piece was learning how to shift expectations, step back from the expert role, and show up as the kind of support her daughter actually needed. 

We di...

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Your teen’s behavior makes more sense when you stop treating it like a moral failing and start treating it like communication. We sit down with Dr. Carla Cataria, an educator turned family support specialist, to talk about what actually helps teens thrive, especially neurodiverse kids who are too often stereotyped, mislabeled, or underestimated by the adults around them. 

We dig into the difference between teaching responsibility and teaching conditional worth. If kids only feel valued when they achieve, perform, or keep the peace, they start building an identity around approval and...

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A diagnosis can feel like it writes your child’s future in ink, but that story is usually wrong. We sit down with Sean Adelman, an orthopedic trauma surgeon and dad to a daughter with Down syndrome, to talk about what he’s learned outside the textbooks: people are not their worst day, and kids are not their labels. The big throughline is raising expectations, not as pressure, but as possibility.

We get personal about how exposure changes fear into understanding. I share how my family first connected with Down syndrome, then...

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One sentence from a professional can steal your breath for years, and one unexpected win can finally give it back. We sit down with Dr. Norinne Russell, educator, advocate, and founder of Russell Coaching for Students, to talk about the part of parenting neurodiverse kids that rarely gets said out loud: the seasons when you never fully exhale, the loneliness behind the logistics, and the way “normal” expectations can quietly become a trap.

We get real about autism, ADHD, anxiety, DMDD, and uneven development in the teen years, especially during the youn...

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Parenting gets loud when you’re stuck in the day to day. This conversation gets quiet in the best way and asks the bigger question: what do we want our kids to carry when our titles and paychecks are long forgotten? We’re joined by Nathaniel Turner, co-founder of the League of Extraordinary Parents, who opens with a powerful reminder that legacy is measured in character and relationships. That grounding turns “success” into something you can actually practice at home. 

Nathaniel walks us through the League’s core tool: backward design parenting...

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Your kid says they want to start a business, become a YouTuber, or make money from gaming and you’re left thinking, “Great… but how?” We sit down with Jessie Dennerline, founder of KidPitchBiz, to talk about what kids actually need before they ever “launch” anything: a simple way to think through ideas, practice public speaking, learn how money works, and get comfortable adjusting after mistakes.

Jessie shares her own path from childhood mini-hustles to the reality of running a coffee kiosk, then building Storybrooke Play Cafe in Utah as a solution for...

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The worst part of an autism diagnosis is not the word itself. It is the silence that can follow when you do not know where to go, what to trust, or who will truly understand your day to day life. We talk with Karen Simmons about that exact moment and the long road after it, from early parenting chaos to building reliable autism resources that help families feel less alone.

We get into why “future tellers” can be so damaging, how a strengths based approach changes everything, and what it looks like...

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You can have the right intentions and still feel like your brain will not cooperate and that is exactly where ADHD and executive dysfunction love to hijack school, work, and daily life. We sit down with Zoe Lewis, founder of New Bloom ADHD Coaching, to talk about what actually helps young adults and college students when assignments pile up, deadlines sneak up, and motivation disappears the moment something feels boring or overwhelming. 

We get concrete about ADHD coaching strategies that respect real life: how to start with the struggle someone is f...

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Most people say they support accessibility, but very few can explain what it actually means or why it keeps breaking down in real life. We’re joined by Daniel Hodges, a nonprofit leader and advocate with a law degree who was born blind, to get specific about where the barriers really come from and what “equity” looks like when you strip out bias and bad design.

We talk about Daniel’s childhood in rural America, where the focus stayed on future cures and risky procedures instead of practical skills like Braille, a white...

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The scariest autism parenting moments often start quietly: sleep disappears, words fade, new behaviors show up, and you keep telling yourself it must be a phase. We talk with Paul Voss, a father of eight, about what it felt like to watch those changes unfold in his youngest daughter and then face a profound autism diagnosis that “turned our life upside down.” What follows is a candid, grounded conversation about nonverbal autism, high support needs, and the family-wide impact that nobody can fully prepare you for.

We get into the brutal real...

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A meltdown in the grocery store. A fight over screens that spirals into yelling. A kid who seems “fine” at school and falls apart at home. When you’re parenting a neurodiverse child, a strong-willed child, or a deeply sensitive child, it can feel like the usual advice was written for a different universe. We wanted something more honest and more useful, so we sat down with Melissa Schulz, a parenting coach and BCBA who brings both professional expertise and real-life parenting experience.

We get into a simple but powerful reframe: behavi...

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A rare diagnosis can sit quietly in the background for years, until one day a scan makes it real. That’s what happened for Will Ruddell, who joins us to share his life with Neurofibromatosis Type 2 (NF2), a rare genetic disorder linked to slow-growing tumors in the brain, spine, and along nerves. Will grew up watching his father deal with serious medical issues, then found out at 26 that he also had NF2 after a migraine led to an MRI and life-changing answers. 

We talk honestly about what happens after the words “you h...

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The parenting moves that look “right” on paper can fall apart in real life, especially when you’re raising a neurodivergent child with ADHD, autism, learning differences, anxiety, or executive functioning challenges. I sit down with clinical psychologist Dr. Anna Levy Warren to talk about the moment many families hit after testing and diagnoses: you finally have the report, but you still don’t have a roadmap for mornings, homework, emotions, and the daily friction that can wear everyone down.

We get concrete about collaborative parenting, because collaboration isn’t a vague idea...

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If your child can talk for days but freezes the moment a pencil hits paper, the problem might not be “motivation” or “attention.” It might be handwriting. We sit down with educator and curriculum designer Holly Britton, founder of Squiggle Squad, to unpack why handwriting instruction is a core building block for literacy, written expression, and confident learning, especially in the early elementary years. 

We get specific about what handwriting really is: a transcription skill that has to become automatic so kids can use their brain power for planning, organizing, and revising...

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The fastest way to lose your kid is to keep talking when what they need is to be understood. That’s why I loved this conversation with Dr. Beth Long, a licensed professional counselor and ABA therapist in Montgomery, Alabama, who brings both clinical clarity and real-parent humility to the hardest parts of family life.

We get into what children actually want from parents at different ages: younger kids craving you to join them more, and teens repeating the line Dr. Beth hears constantly in her work, “My parents never listen to m...

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“The struggle is real, the label is not.” That line sets the tone for a deep, candid conversation with Roman Wyden, founder of the ADHD Is Over movement, as we challenge the way modern culture talks about ADHD, behavior, and so-called “disorders.” We don’t deny the pain families feel. We zoom in on what helps: naming the real struggle, reducing stress, and building environments where kids can actually function and feel safe.

We talk through how ADHD has been rebranded across history, why the symptom “net” keeps widening, and what gets missed wh...

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A life-changing diagnosis can make even the strongest person feel like they’re “too much” for the people they love. That single thought is what pushed Eric Wyatt to create Burden The Bear, a plush bear with a simple purpose: remind patients and families that the illness is the burden, not the person. Eric joins us from Philadelphia to share the real story behind the brand, starting with his mom’s lung cancer and the words that stayed with him long after she was gone. 

Eric’s path isn’t a tidy entrepre...

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If school still looks like memorizing, pacing, and compliance, we’re preparing kids for a world that no longer exists. Today we sit down with educator, leadership researcher, and neuroscience-informed consultant Lisa Reigel to talk about what’s really driving student behavior, teacher burnout, and the rising feeling that the system can’t hold the humans inside it.

We get specific about how high-stakes testing changed the mission from “teach kids” to “teach content,” and why that shift hits neurodivergent learners and trauma-impacted students the hardest. Then we zoom out to the post-AI wo...

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Your house can be beautiful and still be safer, easier, and more supportive for real life. I sit down with Erica Sell, owner of Harmony Home Medical in San Diego, to get practical about home accessibility, assistive technology, and universal design for families raising neurodivergent kids and for anyone planning to help aging parents live well at home.

We start with how Erica built a high-touch, education-first medical equipment showroom after seeing a gap between what people truly need and what third-party payer criteria tends to prioritize. From there, we dig...

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What if the biggest barrier to inclusion isn’t awareness, but the way our systems are built? We sit down with Robert Annis, a London-based founder of NEURO, to unpack how the “alignment trap”—cultures that prize sameness over substance—quietly locks out cognitive diversity and throttles innovation. Instead of chasing badges and box-ticking, Robert lays out a practical path where inclusion becomes a strategic engine for better problem solving, collaboration, and growth.

We explore why designing “for everyone” often defaults to the median, and how designing “for anybody” opens doors for real people wi...

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What if the fastest way to change your child’s behavior is to change how you show up? We sit down with parent coach and author Sue Donnellan to unpack why yelling fails, how Montessori principles build independence, and what it takes to lead the culture of your home with clarity and calm. From the chaos of going from one child to triplets to discovering behavior psychology, Sue shares the exact reframes and systems that helped her move from reactivity to results.

We explore the core shift of treating kids as “adul...

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A lot of bright kids are still stuck on the basics of reading, and too many parents are told to wait—or sold cures that don’t work. We sit down with dyslexia therapist Faye Bankler Cressell to unpack what actually helps struggling readers and how families can start real progress at home without losing years to red tape.

Faye shares her path from special education to structured literacy, sparked by helping her own child during lockdown. She explains why the science of reading matters, what structured literacy looks like in dail...

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Imagine being told a first-grade reading level will define your future—then deciding to rewrite the script. That’s the spark behind our conversation with Russell, a New York State–funded dyslexia researcher who turned personal roadblocks into a practical method that helps students jump from frustration to fluency without elite price tags.

We dig into the brain science that actually moves the needle: stop hammering the back of the brain where dyslexic readers show low activity and start training the frontal systems where activity surges. Russell explains a deceptively simple routin...

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What if the words you needed were waiting inside the moments you try to rush past? We sit down with Australian poet and radiographer Nadine Ellis to explore late autism diagnosis, the quiet injuries of daily life, and the craft of turning hard feelings into language that heals. Nadine was diagnosed at 58, alongside her daughters and husband, and that clarity reframed decades of masking, missed cues, and misplaced shame. Instead of pathologizing sensitivity, she treats it as guidance—and her poems channel that signal into lines that land with precision.

Across ou...

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What if the hardest moments with your child weren’t proof you’re failing, but signals pointing to the support they need? We sit down with autism mom coach and attorney Lisa Candera to explore a practical, compassionate approach to parenting through crisis, burnout, and the daily unknowns. Lisa shares how “regulation starts with us,” why reframing behavior as information changes everything, and the simple steps that turn school chaos into a clearer plan.

We dig into real-world tactics without the jargon: how to call an IEP meeting, request a functional behavior...

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A box of chocolate peanut butter balls shouldn’t change a life—but in our Las Vegas kitchen, it often does. We sit down with Sugar and Spice founder Sherry Long, a former teacher who transformed a classroom skill set into a bustling confectionery that doubles as a paid training ground for neurodivergent and at‑risk young adults. What started as an accidental side hustle became a clear pathway to confidence, wages, and work‑ready skills.

Sherry walks us through the full system: 10‑week paid placements, job coaches in the kitchen, and close...

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A quiet moment over coffee can redraw a life. That’s where our guest, Matt Ross, realized he wasn’t just surviving anymore—he was ready to build a plan for growth. We trace how that spark became Grow or Fold, a candid guide to navigating midlife, protecting your family, and designing a future that feels both possible and personal.

Matt shares the arc of his career—from building radio stations to leading School of Rock to launching One River School—alongside his most defining role: father to a nonverbal autistic son. The c...

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What if accessibility came first and everything else got better because of it? That’s the idea we rally around as Sara Bradford, aka SJ Childs—AuDHD Advocate and creator of Stream-Able Live and the SJ Childs Global Network—lays out a clear, urgent case for building inclusion into the foundation of our products, events, and stories. With one in four people in the United States living with a disability today and more than two billion projected globally by 2050, the numbers alone demand a redesign of how we create and share experiences.

We...

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A blog that almost stalled. A book that took shape anyway. And a voice that keeps getting louder. We sit down with Michael, an autistic author from Ontario, to trace how “Michaelism: My POV on Life with Autism” went from idea to self-published reality—and why persistence beat perfection at every turn.

Michael opens up about the early days when the word autism felt abstract, while picture-based learning made the world click. That contrast sets the tone for an honest look at communication, school, and the moments that defy low expectations—like a c...

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What if the very traits that once set your career on fire could be turned into a repeatable system that saves companies and jobs—without burning you out? That’s the tension we explore with turnaround executive Todd Hagopian, whose fifteen years of undiagnosed bipolar disorder powered massive wins and painful self-sabotage before a diagnosis forced a new path. The meds worked, the edge seemed to vanish, and then he did something rare: he bottled the useful parts of hypomania into practical tools anyone can learn.

We walk through the playbook behi...

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What if social apps actually met neurodivergent needs? That question drives a warm, candid conversation with educator-turned-founder Brittany Moser as we dig into Synchrony, a new social and dating app for autistic and otherwise neurodivergent adults. Brittany traces the journey from a rural Queensland classroom to a Manhattan charter school, where practical inclusion strategies showed that supports designed for autistic students often help everyone. Those lessons—visuals, social stories, structured coaching—evolved into a product built to solve a quiet but urgent problem: the moment when a promising connection stalls because the right word...

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A teenager sent to rehab without ever touching drugs. A yellow‑Formica childhood stitched with bullying and bravado. A school shooting buried by a bigger headline. Jessica Danel’s story doesn’t ask for sympathy—it demands your attention and rewards it with candor, humor, and hard‑won wisdom. We sit down with Jessica to unpack the heartbeat behind her memoir, Bucket List from a Redneck Girl, and the Just Saying podcast she launched to give other moms a place to breathe.

Jessica walks us through the chapters that shaped her: Park Circl...

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A simple song sparks a bigger truth: creative expression can move us through trauma and toward purpose. From that opening, we dive into a frank, compassionate conversation with neurodiversity consultant and advocate Lisa Richer about late diagnosis, parenting autistic and ADHD kids, and the hard-earned art of trusting your gut when the “experts” disagree.

Lisa traces her path from anxiety and ADHD to burnout and recovery, revealing how a single label can validate years of lived experience without defining the person behind it. We examine the emotional whiplash of hearing “too early”...