Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: A Jedi doesn’t roll their eye. They ask why. And what is a Jedi? It stands for the justice, the equity, and the differentiated instruction of a student with who’s duly identified, or a student who’s neurodivergent. And if you’re a Jedi, you don’t roll your eye. You ask why. 

Mandi Morris: Welcome to the ML Chat podcast. I’m Mandi Morris, your host. I’m really excited about this very special time together today with Dr. Dorina. We recorded an episode before that was fine, but not at all what we really intended to record. And at the end of the podcast when we were done recording, we sat with Sean, our producer, and started having this great conversation and realized Dr. Dorina, I think you called it out. That was the episode we should have recorded. Yeah. And I shared a story with you, Dr. Dorina, [00:01:00] and after I shared that story with you, you said, why didn’t we talk about that? And I said, I chickened out. I really did. I invited you onto this podcast after seeing you at nabe and I went to your session, which was on the last day of the conference in the morning and the room was packed and it was a really big room, which I think if anybody who’s been to a conference, if the last day morning session is packed, it tells you a lot.

And I sat in that session and cried because I was so impacted by your power, by your energy, by your advocacy, and by your vulnerability. After that session, I knew I wanted to invite you onto to this podcast, and afterwards there was like a group of us that were just like fan girls following you, and we had this like semi-circle outside of the conference afterwards and a lot of moms.

Started [00:02:00] sharing personal testimony really of their experiences with Neurodivergence, with people close to them. I’ll say that. And it was this incredible space that you don’t get often in life, let alone a conference where total strangers really hugging at the end and sharing pictures. It was really incredible.

And you had these little like chicken flyers, like these rubber chickens that you put on your finger and you fly. And I brought them home ’cause I thought my daughter would love these. And I got home that Saturday evening. And what I haven’t mentioned is that my daughter, over the course of several years has gotten a lot of different diagnoses, but was officially diagnosed with autism this past fall.

And in addition to her autism diagnosis has an A-D-H-D-O-C-D in general anxiety diagnosis. But autism is her umbrella diagnosis. When we went through that process through the University of Florida, which was [00:03:00] phenomenal, the incredible doctors there, I asked, when do we talk to her about this? And I was shocked when they said, now, as soon as possible.

I was so scared. And I’ve been in education my whole career. This is my 19th year in education. And I thought, I’m not equipped to have this conversation. What if I mess up? What if I say something wrong? I, I just felt so much weight on my shoulders as a parent and I felt so ill equipped. And when I sat in your session, I felt empowered.

I felt like I can have this conversation. And that morning I was sitting in bed with my daughter and we were playing with those chicken launchers that you gave us at the conference, and we were laughing and having a great time. And I called my husband in and said. I’m ready. Let’s do this. Of course, I’d read like 500 blogs over the [00:04:00] span of four months and Elizabeth, all these podcasts, and I had this book that been recommended from a doctor.

We had seen All cats are on the autism spectrum and um, we talked that my daughter, about her diagnosis and I said, when we go through this, when you, when something resonates with you, will you point to the cat and say, that’s me. And we went through the book and page after page, she said, that’s me. Her whole body was lit up.

She felt seen. That just opened my eyes to how powerful and important that conversation was. And that’s why I wanted to have you on this podcast is to have this conversation. For all of the moms and parents and educators who are out there trying to understand how do we have these tough conversations?

How do we connect with community when it’s really scary to be vulnerable, and [00:05:00] how do we come back even to conversations? When I chickened out last time and I wasn’t vulnerable in that space, I got too scared, and here we are, we’re giving it another go. So thank you for being here with us today, Dr. Dorina.

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: First of all, it is an absolute honor to be here, and you’re going to have to bear with me. I’m in Gen X pause right now, so I’m gonna cry at the top of a hat, but I’m also going to get very emotional because of your vulnerability. I don’t think you realize the power of that introduction. I don’t think you realize how hard that was to do and throw it out there into the podcast world that took integrity, strength, honor of your daughter, m.

Of everything so that you could make sure someone else listening would hear. Pay attention and say, maybe now I would have the ability to go up to my child and say something, or, [00:06:00] what can I learn in this next 45 minutes to an hour so that maybe I could share that with someone in a classroom or a parent or a community member just to be.

A part of community, what you said will bring people together just like the semicircle that we did. And I, I do have to say, because it is funny, we did the chicken Olympics and we did the gold medals of who could throw the chicken the fastest, right? And the farthest. And then you said you chickened out, so you weren’t being able to do it.

So the pun was definitely not lost on me. But you brought something with total physical response, a strategy for English learners, multilingual learners, but a strategy for duly identified students. That was the whole concept. It was called squirrel identifying our Elvas English learners with varying exceptionalities.

And that was the big thing I wanted people to know, not accept EX A, C-C-E-P-T. And that’s what you are doing with M. You are [00:07:00] accepting M for her exceptionalities. That makes her beautiful and that makes you an ally and an advocate for other moms and other students within our profession as well. And I am just honored to be here to make our own mini semicircle right here of all those beautiful women that I have since reached out to.

And just really want to just open up today with you, talk a little bit about A DHD, talk about my late diagnosis of A DHD, talk about emotional dysregulation and the importance of emotional intelligence and emotional dysregulation. Talk about OCD. Talk about the spectrum. What does that mean? The actual autism spectrum?

Talking about the varying. Aspects of the spectrum itself that we, one cannot generalize. M is one situation. Dr. Dorito is another, my nephew is another. My, it’s, it’s [00:08:00] all different. And so that’s what we’re here for, to get bits and pieces and really get down to the meat and potatoes of that so that someone could hear us and feel seen as well.

So I, I just, I love that we just stopped. I love that the both of us just went, wait a second. This was good. We talked about mls. It was good. And then even producer Sean, he’s the human Xanax or the human Chama meal for us and calmed us and just turned around and went, this is the stuff that we need right now.

And so we stopped for a week and lived our lives reflected on the NABE conference, the semicircle of beautiful people. All the things we learned from each other, what we learned from that moment, and. Here we are. So I can’t wait and ask away any questions, but maybe let’s just talk, let’s just grab a cup of coffee or a beverage of choice and cheers to vulnerability and being together today.

I just am so happy to have met you, Mindy. 

Mandi Morris: Yeah, I feel [00:09:00] the same and I think being a parent and going through this journey has made me reflect a lot on my years in the classroom. And I’ve said to my husband who’s also been in education for 19 years, oh man, I wish I could go back to this kid. I wish I could go back to that kid.

I wish I could sit in that parent conference again. Oh, what I would give to sit in that parent conference again and just have a different perspective, have more patience. I think our public school system is often very strained and families and students don’t, teachers don’t have the resources we need to understand.

All of the supports that a student needs. And I’m experiencing that now as a parent, but I wish there was better access for teachers to sit in the session that you had at nabe that was as an educator [00:10:00] and a parent, so empowering. And I just, I wonder why do you think your work has, the way that people were reacting in that room was incredible to me.

And I imagine that you have that same response everywhere you go. Why do you think that there’s, what do you observe? Like why do you think the need is so prevalent right now? 

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: Thank you for the compliments, and I appreciate that and I do feel that sense of connection because of a couple of things. The authenticity of it for so long as a presenter, as a teacher, as somebody who wanted to be a thespian my whole life and go in and try out for SNL and do my thing, it was because I was very good at masking.

When I became a light, a late diagnose, and my voice is a little shaky right now because this is a vulnerable piece for me as well, because I am telling the truth of what I thought was my personality, right? That I was just this unbelievably outgoing, which I am. I’m the Tasmanian devil and a double espresso, and that’s what I’m known [00:11:00] for, and I’m just happy, and I’m this, and I’m that.

But people say, how do you have so much energy? How do you do this? And oh, you’re just so this, you’re just, so this, you’re mo because I know my superpower. Now my superpower is A DHD. My superpower is the introvert that I am, which is I feed off people, but then I give so much of my heart and my soul because of the superpower of being a DHD.

Because of me being a happy person. But then I get to go and become recluse for a couple days and just have to shut down for a little bit. A lot of kids do after school, a lot of adults do after school, and then I come back in. But I told people that I unmasked. There’s tiktoks, there’s reels, there’s socials where everybody under the sun.

It’s trendy. It’s sexy. It’s great to have autism. It’s, I am not in any way taking away [00:12:00] from anybody’s diagnosis that is medical, but a self-diagnosis and jumping on a social media site, tell you that, and then talk about strategies, and then download my AI 9 99 version workbook from somebody who’s been in a classroom for three years, worked with one kid.

You gotta stop for a second and know your sources, and that’s what you did. That’s what a lot of parents, they don’t know where to go, especially young parents. So when they came to my session, they saw evidence and research based. They saw actual examples. They saw strategies, and they saw a person who was successful despite the challenges that in fact, telling them, yes, a diagnosis does not define me.

It helps me find me. And if that’s one thing somebody is going to listen to right now, is [00:13:00] that a diagnosis of A-D-H-D-O-C-D, and even me, the woo-hoo, happy person, quick witted, new Yorker, this and that. Or being tested to be on the spectrum as well. And because of certain things as a child that is OCD related.

So we’re trying to figure it out through a lot of tests and it does come doubt to be. OCD of intrusive thoughts, the echo repetition signs of it, but there also is a little bit of a traumatic situation. So these are all things that I’m saying out loud in the middle of a presentation that people are like, that’s me, or That’s my child.

Or, oh my God, that’s my husband. Or, oh my gosh, that’s my what? That’s my partner. That’s, wait a minute, that’s the kid that I’m seeing in the classroom. That’s a, okay, I’m not an expert in it, but I’m understanding this now, and I could take this information back to the classrooms and say, this is what we learned according to the research.

This is what we learned here. That is the ripple effect of bringing to light the [00:14:00] darkness, the people that are in darkness that don’t know what to do with a duly identified student or a child with an IEP that specifically says SLD, or it says O-C-D-A-D-H-D-A-D-D. Before I go off on this tangent again, I’m just gonna pause for a minute because now I’m getting very excited because I’m getting hyper, ’cause I’m fixating, which is another thing that A DHD people do on something which is the understanding of what it really means to have A-D-D-A-D-H-D-O-C-D, autism.

We can’t put this one definition to it, but we can have some ideas so that we can really hone in on what we need for ourselves, for our communities, for our kids, and what we need to do in our classrooms. 

Mandi Morris: Something that really struck me in your session, and I think what as a mom made me feel really emotional in your session, I watched you and you were [00:15:00] talking about brain breaks and we were like playing instruments at one point during your session.

Uh, it was, and I just. I, I looked at you and I listened to you, and I sat there and I thought, is my child ever gonna have an educator who cares this much for her? I Are there gonna be people out there that care this much? Because I think as a parent, you have some fears about what school is like for your child, the isolation, the social divergence, how teachers perceive them.

And if you could talk to my child, her inference ability and her background knowledge. Is phenomenal. Her ability to connect information, to remember information, it is [00:16:00] phenomenal. Do not put a worksheet in front of my child. Like, do not. And if she is gonna sit there all day long with worksheets, she’s not going to do them.

And it might look like she has these huge gaps. But if you talked to my child, you would think, how is she only seven? The amount of information in this child’s head. But then as a parent, and you’re left with, well, what am I supposed to do? And so there’s this movement of homeschooling or alternative school situations or, but as a working parent, I can’t homeschool my child.

I work full time. And it’s, I just, I sat there and I felt so encouraged by you that how much you care and the strategies that you were so purposeful and implementing in your classroom and the power that has for your students. 

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: Thank you for that. And thank you for saying what you’re saying. ’cause there’s, we can put in five strategies just in [00:17:00] that conversation right there.

And I think that’s what people want, what they’re listening to. I think what we’re doing is anecdotal. We’re telling the stories, we’re being vulnerable, but now here’s some things that you can do. And the first thing is it is the tough one. This is where I always and will say this constantly with all children and even with ourselves, TLC squared, we must give our children tender loving care, but we must always give them tough love culture as well.

We cannot cuddle children due to their IEPs or their 5 0 1 C3, 401k, whatever the name is, or the acronym that we’re giving children nowadays. But what we can do is understand that we have to give them that tough love, which means parents, be careful. Do not coddle your child. And also be careful of being a helicopter mom a lot of times out of protection for your child.

That protection turns into tank moms, not even helicopters, tanks, where you will roll over [00:18:00] anybody if you mess with my kid. Okay, you mess with faia, you get burned kind of thing, okay? And you don’t want that. What you want is clear communication by asking the teacher, are you going to take care of my child?

I wanna ask you, are you going to take care of my child? You and I need to have a conversation together to understand. I trust you as an educator, but I also know that roster equals responsibility. You are responsible for my child seven hours out of the day. And M deserves a teacher who loves her and respects her, and understands the way she learns.

And with roster equals responsibility. That means I have to look at the roster, see the child. And although it might not say very specifically what it is up to the teacher to have the communication with the parent and the parent have the communication with the teacher, but not this ready. Ms. Mandi, hi. My child [00:19:00] M has autism OCD, and she has a DHD.

And it’s your responsibility to take care of her for the seven hours that I’m here and I will not accept worksheets and that is not what I’m gonna be. That stuff doesn’t work. We have to work together, not against teachers or for education, public education. We are for the education of your child. We are there to be with your child.

We are there as much as we possibly can with everything else that goes on top of us. So what your teacher, you should go up to your teacher and try this sentence frame. I am concerned about the wellbeing of my child in your class. I am concerned that she might not have her needs met because of A, B, and C.

Her learning style is this some possible solutions for said learning style that I have researched and in my field as an educator are this, [00:20:00] do you have the differentiated instruction expertise to help my child with that? And if so, or if not, how can I support you in that to teach her the best? You cannot just drop a kid off and expect that teacher to know what the differentiation instruction is.

You cannot expect that child’s teacher will know what UDL is. Do you know what UDL is? Do we know the university? Universal Design of Learning helps our children with A DHD and by every teacher understanding then incorporating UDL into their classrooms with differentiated instruction and clear, concise communication.

And understand that Pinterest is not pedagogy and STEM doesn’t come in a bin for a child who does not work with worksheets because the information is within that rhymed on purpose. We have many children who can speak their answers and are freaking brilliant like myself, [00:21:00] who found out much later in life that I have a over 132 IQ Q, but my mother did not want anybody to know that I did because she wanted every child to, if I went into gifted, then I would be a little bit more creative and then I would not have this job that I thought would be for safety.

My parents are much older. That’s what they felt. So they built that for me. But do you know that A DHD kids, I’m one of the most creative, brilliant, phenomenal. Are babies on the spectrum? Are babies with autism? Oh my goodness gracious. The brains of these children and the abilities and what they can do when pushed.

But then that dichotomy of being pushed act academically, but making sure the emotional is right there because you need that Goldilocks. ’cause if not bang, you will have an outbreak and an outburst. You as a parent say to everything I just [00:22:00] said there. 

Mandi Morris: It’s so spot on. Relationships are so important. It’s, it is been very interesting to me.

And I’ve talked to other parents with children with similar diagnoses I’ve said about my child, even since she was very young. She’s like a sixth sense about people. And it’s like this like. She can read below the surface with people and she will make decisions pretty quickly if she trusts someone or doesn’t trust them or likes them.

And it, it’s just interesting to see how that impacts how much she’s willing to work for someone, how hard she’s willing to push herself. She’s constantly like reading the space, reading the room, reading the like, what can I get away with? What can I figure out? Her mind is constantly moving. And I think something you said that’s really [00:23:00] important is that the emotional.

With rigor, having that balance is very important. Be. Before we started recording, we talked a little bit about masking and any parent who has a child, I don’t wanna say any parent, but I think it’s very common for parents who have a child, a neurodivergent child, they will come home from school and it like all comes out and it can make that space and time after school really challenging because we worked with a doctor once.

He described it this way and I loved it. He said, imagine you’re wearing jeans all day long that are too tight and they’re zipped up and you are just flowing out of those jeans and we’ve all been there. Right? Stop right now. The moment you get home, what do you do? Like it’s coming off. So, uh, you know, that was his explanation of this is what school is like for a child that’s been masking all day.

And that girls do a lot of masking and often even more [00:24:00] masking than boys and. It helped us understand when we received that information a couple of years ago, it helped us understand what we saw after school. It helped us understand the why. It didn’t help us understand what do we do, how do you handle that as a parent?

But I think it is helpful for teachers to understand also, Hey, when my child gets home from school, this is what I’m experiencing. How can we work together? That there might be some places throughout the day where she doesn’t have to mask. So that when we, when she gets home, it doesn’t feel like I’ve been sitting in seven or eight hours of this burden and I cannot handle the burden anymore.

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: And that safety is what it really comes down to as well. It’s that oxytocin that gets released when a child feels safe in a classroom. And when you are justified, your classroom is oxy justified that unmasking can actually happen. But I will tell you, going home, one of the strategies that actually, I don’t know why I get upset about this [00:25:00] stuff.

I think it’s because the vulnerability of just realizing that had I had any of this as a kid, Mandi, where I would be right now, but I can’t look back and I can’t grieve the life I could have had had I been diagnosed earlier. But I watched a TED Talk and I hope I can find it and maybe give a link or something to it where there’s a young woman who goes and does a TED talk on how she was so brilliant and gifted and had everything going for her, but she was so smart.

But she could do everything ’cause it was so easy. But the procrastination, the the, which we didn’t even get into yet, but the executive dysfunction, the mental paralysis, all of the things that go on with myself included. And she said that she hit a plateau once she graduated high school and then all of a sudden there was this expectation that she just could not live up to because of mental paralysis, because of executive dysfunction, because of A DHD.

So she actually started [00:26:00] to self loath and she started to self-destruct and she does a TED talk on the fact that she even got through this TED talk that that was a huge accomplishment for her and she felt she regressed. There is an enormous amount of mourning. The life you coulda, woulda, shoulda have if you are not diagnosed early.

And so the fact that you’re diagnosing M, not you are, but you. You went through all these tests and everything with M is so good because of now the strategies that you can see and work with at seven years old, so that by the time she’s 17, she’s probably already going to be at Harvard, right? So we know this with beautiful minds.

Why I’m saying this is the idea of the things and the strategies I could have done with my dad, which I had a two minute thing. It was called the red chair, two minutes, and I was allowed to sit all three of us. My dad was a New York City cop, came home, he sat in a chair, had his newspaper. When we got there, we had two minutes [00:27:00] each to discuss how our day was, so that there was a connection with a very busy man, but he was very structured.

My brother, my sister, no problem, comes to me. My father lifted up the newspaper because he knew no way two minutes was gonna happen. And I went on until dinner until it was 10 to six. I spoke for 45 minutes without taking a breath. And that was exactly what you’re talking about. And in his busy parents and things that you have to do, there’s this explosion.

So my husband actually, and I researched some strategies that I started doing for children that I’m doing for myself, and one of them is blogging for me, but I don’t blog. I voice everything through a voice recorder that. Transcribes and then I make videos out of them to share for with my husband so he can watch it.

That’s the beauty of ai. You don’t have to make the videos, but imagine if you have a child coming [00:28:00] home and then they record what their day was like and how it was as if they’re on the news. And I call it BBC news. And then I have a microphone. Oh, I wish I had it with me, a microphone, which I did bring to the session.

And I start talking to myself going, Hey, this is how my day was and this is what happened, and this is what happened here. And then, oh, and then my students did this, and then I did this, and then I had a great time. And then when I stopped at Starbucks, I couldn’t believe it, but they had to make my drink four different times.

And there’s my husband, a software engineer, like, but when I do it that way, and then he goes for his walk and he is listening. I promise you this could happen with anybody. He comes back and we’re sitting there with a cop of decaf watching one of our shows, and he goes, wow, four times they had to make that Starbucks.

What happens is that he’s validating my story, but it’s not of the unmasking immediately, because then after I do that, by the way, I become [00:29:00] exhausted and then I get gut reclose. I get into my room and I don’t wanna talk to anybody, and then I’ll start regretting all the things I’ve said or done stuff because I start to ruminate, and then I start to fixate and ruminate, fixate, ruminate.

But by structuring something where it becomes a game to tell my unmasking stories to my family, that actually helps children. So that’s just one other strategy that you could do to balance the time of being a parent of a child that will unmask as soon as they get home. 

Mandi Morris: I had asked permission to have this conversation today.

And she told me, that’s fine. But I want my own podcast. I don’t wanna be on your podcast. So I think she needs a microphone and she needs to just start recording. 

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: That’s it. And as long as it’s between you and hubs and her, and even your other son. And just to do it that way, because [00:30:00] what she just said, and first of all, we have to backtrack and say something.

The fact that you and I had a discussion before this podcast about M and making the decision to be vulnerable and talk about your journey with em on this podcast, we both said simultaneously we need to ask permission. It’s up to her, their strategy. Number two, three, and four. You’re giving voice to a child.

You’re giving them the autonomy, you’re giving them who they are as a human. It’s not, I’m making the decision, I’m the adult. It’s quite antiquated to think that way. There are disciplined decisions of what is right for you, and that’s the boundaries that must, another strategy. Boundaries must be consistent and they must not be crossed, end of story, consistent and not crossed.

There it will be difficult, but when they understand, because I know in talking [00:31:00] to you, M pushes the envelope and m tries, but if you are in fact a tank mom, helicopter mom, or you feel your child is, or you are the victim of, you can’t, again, a diagnosis doesn’t define you. It helps you find you. And by setting clear, concise, and straight boundaries, that is actually more love than allowing and the boundary to be crossed because that love, as Renee Brown actually talks about the importance of setting boundaries because.

There’s less room for resentment. When you set a boundary, that boundary within yourself as well as that person, they know where they stand and that’s actually a healthy form for you to have. But it also leaves less room for resentment if the boundary is not go going to be crossed or is on both sides.

So yes, the vulnerability of saying to asking permission for em to do that than her having her own podcast. And you could have a family podcast that [00:32:00] at the end of the week you watch it with popcorn and then you think, and then by that time also the, what’s the word for it? The urge, right? The dysregulation to let it all out kind of subsides because it’s already there.

It’s already there somewhere. And it is just a beautiful, and it’s a perfect way to make memories by the way. 

Mandi Morris: That is an incredible recommendation. I would love to talk for a moment about access for mental health wellbeing, and I think about this from both a mother’s perspective and an educator. We are very fortunate.

We are with an incredible therapist right now. She told me that research shows that it takes, on average, takes 13 or 14 years for a person to find a therapist that aligns with [00:33:00] them, who helps them, who hears them, that they feel deeply connected with, and I just. That is wild to me. And I think about, I have worked in some pretty large public schools and there’s two counselors in the entire building.

And really a lot of what they’re doing is scheduling, right, and putting out fires. And it, I think about all of the families over the years that they, it’s like I now know what feeling lost feels like as a parent. And with our son I did, there was a lot of, aren’t we good parents? Look at us. Aren’t we good at this?

And I, man, I wish I could go back in time and apologize to some people. And

you get what you get and [00:34:00] you as a parent. You have to be humble enough and vulnerable enough to accept the child who was brought into your world and to parent that child, not the child that you thought, not the child that you somebody else thought or someone else’s expectations, or the other child that was already in your home, the child in front of you, and finding a therapist, a counselor, a psychologist.

It took us about four years and it was very frustrating, very expensive, very isolating. I felt crazy at times, and my husband and I have had so many conversations where we just sat. They’re like, we are both educators. We both have a master’s degree. We. [00:35:00] Are finding this very hard, and we have each other.

We’re right, like we’re in this together, we’re in this as a family. And I’ve just been really very aware through this journey of how hard it is to find access for your family, to find community, to find people to connect with, but yet how vital it is. Because you cannot do it alone. 

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: No, you cannot. And that is why we’re having this conversation and we changed that great conversation of ML like we did last week or two weeks ago into this because of that sense of community that’s needed and vital.

Imagine the privilege you have also. That is the one thing, first of all, I commend you for your compassion, your reflection and self-awareness, which is massive in emotional intelligence, which teachers as parents as well of children. Like M brilliant, be neuros, spicy children [00:36:00] must be self-aware and be very in touch with their emotional intelligence and able to think constructively and behave wisely.

And there is a direct correlation with the higher, the emotional intelligent parent, the higher the increase in successful rearing of children who are in fact neurodivergent. Because your self-awareness allows you to create the strategies that we’re about to talk about and where we would talk about.

And also your awareness of compassion and empathy, your compassion towards other people. Looking back, yes, your 14-year-old, brilliant, perfect. Literally perfect child. Easy. It was great. Pat your back. Now you even said to yourself, my gosh, the things I probably said, how beautiful was that statement?

Because you realized right. You also said something brilliant, which was, you get what you get. Okay. You get what you get. Quite often there’s a denial [00:37:00] that my child does not like this, or I want my child to be in this image, let’s say a dad. Not to perpetuate stereotypes or generalize, but a dad wants a son to be a football star and that son wants to actually be in theater and that son 100% wants to be on Broadway.

The push for that child to just play football for the sake of playing football, you wanna go to plays, you can do plays, that’s fine, but just, I need you to play at least flag football over the summer. You are projecting what you want and you’ve got to dig deeper. That’s a lot of times it could be something deep rooted that you never did or whatever it was.

We’re all guilty of some of that every once in a while, but what we’re talking about is to enforce something when, because you don’t want it to be a certain way. And that I often see with children who have autism or children with autism because, and you’ll have to forgive me by the way, with [00:38:00] autism, children who have autism, the terminology itself is in, is important that we don’t say autistic children, that adjective, uh, they don’t have something I’m using the word have.

So I will make mistakes in that as well because everybody says it differently. And I wanna honor all parents, but I will generally say just autism itself. And so you have people just trying to fix things because you don’t want them to admit that’s what it is. You have to meet the children where they are and meet the children of what they like.

And if they’re gonna be a robotic stem kid, they ain’t playing football. End of story. You’ve got to learn. And I know that’s so little, but I’m using that little example into something bigger so that you don’t project what? Because neuros, spicy is not normal. Okay, there I said it. Okay. Neurotypical.

There’s no such word as normal, by the way, but this is helping you Neurotypical. [00:39:00] And neurodivergent. A neurodivergent child is a freaking genius, always brilliant, wonderful, this fabulous brain. It just is in a neurotypical world and therefore it’s sometimes difficult. So if you’re neurotypical, it might be difficult for you to connect and see and have higher, the not higher, but these expectations that might not be what they want.

You should always have high expectations. So by talking to them, finding what they love, find their fixations, find all the things that they enjoy, and that’s where their education should be surrounded around. Not something that you wanna project upon them. I know I’m saying too much on this, but I can’t stress it enough because I see it way too much.

Mandi Morris: Yeah. I think the power of what you’re saying is really about 

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: you gotta love that freaking kid no matter what. 

Mandi Morris: Yeah. And I think it comes from a place of fear. I think parents [00:40:00] are so afraid that they don’t know how to parent that child and forcing a norm or forcing what’s com, what’s familiar to me? Yes.

Is it feels more comfortable, it feels more known, and having to throw away all of that. Having to throw away, this is how I was parented, this is how my spouse was parented. This is how I already parented a child. It is like being in a free fall and it is very uncomfortable and 

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: and time consuming. Yes, uncomfortable.

It’s time consuming. You could not have said it better, and when you have a neurodivergent child and you are enforcing a neurotypical ideology, you are missing the mark. So to have [00:41:00] to reinvent yourself as a parent and find new ways to parent that child is, like you said, scary and you don’t wanna mess up.

It’s already hard. But the acceptance that once again a diagnosis does not define you, it helps you find you. Same thing for the parents. A diagnosis of a child who’s neurodivergent doesn’t define me. It helps me find me as a parent so that my child can find themselves. My advocacy should not be coddling.

My advocacy should not be overprotection naturally because now you are saying My child is different. Yeah, your child is different in one of, and many of the most beautiful ways. It’s you who now has to be different. And here’s the thing about, we’re talking about the privilege of having a master’s degree.

I have a privilege to [00:42:00] spend a lot of money on this. I have a privilege of living in a state and by a university that could, I can find the right things. Imagine now coming into our profession of coming from a different country, not having the same language cultural norms. We have to understand that there’s also a privilege aspect of this, right?

So here you are, highly educated parents, master’s degrees, access to doctors in the state of Florida, incredible doctors and incredible universities. Point is you have this privilege. Whereas as ML educators on this ML podcast, we have people coming from other countries where the cultural norm may be, there’s nothing wrong with my child, or not that neurodivergent.

What is that? Or, or it might be the, just the lack of education simply because they were not exposed to it or they are exposed to it and they’re saying, no, that’s not [00:43:00] it. There’s an SNL skit actually with Pedro Pascal. If you look up when a gentleman brings a lady home to their house, and Pedro Pascal pretends to be the mother and talks about how her child does not have a mental.

Health issue and if you look it up and Google it, you will see it. And it is quite common. And although it’s a stereotypical positive, funny stereotype that you would have of a, of a Latina mother, you would see that sometimes in parent conferences. I’ve been aware of that as well, that when there is a possibility where we would like the student to be tested or we wanna see certain things, there’s that cultural aspect.

Access, like you said, access in the community. This is so important because we already know our system is flawed in the way in which we want children to be screened, in which the way we want to see children in the public system, it has to go 2, 3, 4, [00:44:00] 5 years before they’re even looked at. Then the data that you were mentioning about trying to find the right therapist as it is.

And yet we still have schools, states, districts that don’t follow the protocol of the importance of social emotional learning. Now, I will say in the state of Florida, I’m not 100% keen on the fact that they don’t follow the term SEL, but I give Florida credit because they do have something called the resilient Florida student.

And if you go on the Florida Department of Education, it’s quite incredible what they’re asking for this program of the resilient Florida student. And you can volunteer and take courses to be a resilient Florida educator volunteer, where you have to take a course to know a little bit more about those competencies, which is basically case they’re just renaming it.

But I digress and I say kudos in that way because. [00:45:00] You’re not volunteering in a school district. You have to take courses to educate yourself on what is resiliency, what is compassion, what is empathy, what is citizenship? And it’s quite good. That’s a start that we are shifting from no to even those who have to or would like to volunteer in schools.

You have to be aware of this resiliency or in other states social emotional aspect of children so that you can be more prepared when you are faced with something that you’re not normally faced with as a substitute, as a new teacher, as an educator. There are things out there, but not enough, and that’s where we come in to say, where is a community?

Where do we come together? Where can we, without homeschooling, pulling out, going to special schools and going to private schools, sending kids certain places. That’s a very [00:46:00] big topic. 

Mandi Morris: I like that you brought up how the other layer of complication, if you will, when we think about the ML space, and we’ve had some episodes, some great episodes where we have dug into duly identified students and processes.

It’s. Complicated. It’s really challenging and having those conversations. There’s the cultural piece. There’s the language piece. So do you have access to interpreters and translators in your school district to have those conversations? Are they culturally competent and aware conversations? How do you do that in a way that feels inclusive and positive and not?

It doesn’t leave parents feeling like there’s something wrong with my child and the system doesn’t know how to support my child. Or when I sat in your session, everything about the way you talked about a classroom just felt so [00:47:00] empowering and it felt so inclusive to students that come with all different types of learning needs.

I think that these conversations, whether you are a person like me who my child is growing up monolingual, or you are an educator in a classroom like I formerly was teaching English learners, if you’re a teacher listening to this and in you’re teaching first grade, second grade, you’ve got English learners in your classroom.

I think that we all have to start talking about this with more intention and purpose, and we have to collectively say, we need more resources. We need more community around these needs that are so prevalent in our classrooms and this conversation. I just hope that it helps a teacher out there. It helps a parent out there [00:48:00] to reach out with some vulnerability.

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: Having an inclusive classroom is extremely challenging right now. In the demands of a teacher, I do not deny that for 20 plus years I’ve had an inclusive classroom because I wanted to be included. I’m coming from a different perspective, as with of you. You are a parent. I am unable to have children, and I will tell you something that’s very vulnerable in the sense of that I’ve tried four times and was unsuccessful four times, and we should normalize conversations about miscarriages and trying to get pregnant, and the statistics of me fearful in my geriatric pregnancies of the higher statistic of prote, potentially having a child who’s neurodivergent and on top of me being neurodivergent on top of my husband being [00:49:00] neurodivergent, then it increases.

So I didn’t work hard enough. To try. So I’m coming from a space of I was afraid to have a neurodivergent child in this world. I’m coming from a place of regret that I didn’t work hard enough, because I bet you every day when you look at M, you say, I couldn’t even imagine. I could not even imagine not having this genius in my presence, in my heart, in my soul, this baby that came out of my body that is a part of me and my husband, but yet uniquely her.

The stigma of what autism was back then when I was trying to get pregnant instilled such a fear in me that I would be a failure. So I never have the opportunity. So I [00:50:00] want parents who are listening right now who are challenged. Who are frustrated, who feel alone. You have what was given to you as a gift, a living, breathing, healthy child with a brain that just doesn’t necessarily match what the typical day in and day out of a neurotypical brain is.

You have that opportunity. I want you to remember what I’m saying on the days that it is so hard that you can physically look at touch if they allow you some. I know, and all the hardships are still there because you have someone existing next to you and there are women who are trying so hard to conceive.

There are women who were afraid to [00:51:00] conceive. There are women who were not successful. So know that even though it is challenging, remember the gift that child is and the giftedness of the neurodivergent brain and know that is so important that we think of ways not just UDL inclusion classrooms and making sure the IEP and there’s 20 minutes and you have push in and pull out and all of that.

That isn’t everything. What it really is, the compassion, the empathy, the sense of community, finding a space, but also you not falling victim. That’s really what I wanna say is, I have a child with this and my child does this and that When you, when it becomes a dumping ground to vent, don’t be a victim.

Ventor of your neurodivergent child. Be a value ventor of your neurodivergent child. [00:52:00] Value venting means. That I have a challenge and there’s gonna be a solution. Or at least we’re gonna think of one or brainstorm not. Oh my gosh. And then because that’s Misery loves company and the commiserating doesn’t work.

It does nothing for the child, and it does nothing for the teacher. And whenever you feel that way, remember what I said too, because that undiagnosed person has winter clothes. She wants to sell. Been sitting here for two, two months, a piano. She wants to sell a messy room. Why do I have winter? So well ’cause the Florida weather, but, and all the stuff everywhere in this room.

I wanted you to see, I wanted you to see that this meeting at 4 45 that we were together going to do this podcast. I was frozen the whole day, couldn’t do anything. Stayed in my pajamas because when you have something in the afternoon, you get mental paralysis with a DHD. Then you get time blindness that [00:53:00] it’s four o’clock and I have 45 minutes to get ready and I go, oh, I could put my makeup on in 15 minutes and before you know it, you’re five minutes late for your 4 45.

I could go on about all the different things because I did not have someone to set the boundary to let me know and to tell me, you are neuros spicy and you are brilliant and I want you to own it. And you have been diagnosed with A, B, C, and D, but a diagnosis doesn’t define you. It helps you find you, and we’re gonna find ways to make this work.

But I’m not gonna let you get away with a couple of things that I think you’re gonna try to get away with simply because you say, oh, that’s my brain because I’m this. Don’t get cute ’cause I already got you. That’s what you wanna be with your child. You wanna be able to open up and have that communication.

Understand the neuroscience of a neurodivergent brain. And have this understanding [00:54:00] and this open conversation like you did with M so that they own it but aren’t defined by it. 

Mandi Morris: You said something that I really wanna sit with for a second. As an educator, we’ve all been in this space where you’re in A PLC or you’re in the lunchroom or the mail room or the hallway, and it just becomes this like verbal, just vomit of what’s wrong with this student and why can’t this student do this, and why can’t he or she function like this or behave like this, or.

What’s your advice in that moment? I think as a colleague it can be difficult to interrupt those conversations because you do wanna recognize, being a teacher is a hard job. There is a lot on your plate. There are a lot of expectations. From your admin to the parents, to the district, [00:55:00] the fidelity to the curriculum, the, the on and on.

What is the right way to interrupt a conversation that is not fruitful, it’s it’s damaging while also recognizing sometimes people need to vent. How do you handle that as an educator? 

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: It’s a absolutely great question and there’s, it’s a problem because of burnout and because of the expectations of teachers and what is happening right now, it starts with the principal, it starts with the district itself.

But if we’re gonna create this sense of community and compassion, and for all students where there’s inclusive classrooms, we also have to have asset-based pedagogy where all children are valued for their gifts, just like multilingual learners is asset based. So the first thing is that, the second thing is appreciative inquiry.

So there’s things that you can write down in Google, because that’s podcasts in itself, and hopefully we’ll be able to do that in the future. But appreciative inquiry is understanding the positives that are going on, not the negatives. It’s not just [00:56:00] asset negative and deficit based ideology, it’s all the positive gifts.

And then hone in on those. All of a sudden you start to only think positively. It’s almost like manifestation, good intention by consistently thinking of appreciative inquiry, things that are being done right? Okay. Asset based as well in, oh, the child didn’t do this. They don’t speak English, or they don’t know how to read.

No, the child actually orally answered everything brilliantly. That’s my differentiation. But the test, I do not care. I’m creating a safe space for that child so that they’re intrinsically motivated to want to learn. That’s all I care about right now. That’s my job. My job is to create a safe space for this child to brilliantly understand and grasp information for themselves.

But if you hear conversations where they’re on the sidebar, they’re in the, the walking down the hall. Sherry has had his episodes again, geez, I cannot deal with this kid. When you hear that is something that is taught, [00:57:00] it must be understood. And a school where a norm is every child. If you are to be the educators who lead to inspire and empower via empathy with good emotional intelligence, then you will actually use the sentence frame.

I am concerned, you will not complain. You will show concern and at any time you wanna go to sharing, he had one of his freaking episodes again, and now he’s off the wall and all the kids. Now I had to, and then, oh my gosh, I should have baker out there. All the different things. There is something called ableism.

Be very careful on the words that you use, and number two, you have to always use that frame. I am concerned and some possible solutions because all of a sudden if the entire school, all teachers, principals, paraeducators, custodians, the front office turned around and say. I am concerned about Dharius behavior today.

He went off the wall. Some possible solutions are, maybe we have to put him in [00:58:00] this class before lunch so that he does A, B, C in dc. But I didn’t allow a teacher to complain about Dharius. You wanna do that in happy hour? That’s fine. But in the school building, you’re not gonna do it. I won’t let you do it.

Because one kid hears, one parent hears, one other teacher hears, I won’t allow it because I don’t, I’m gonna get upset

because that kid didn’t do anything wrong. This is why they did nothing wrong. They’re just being a kid trying to go from classroom to classroom with different styles and not knowing why. Why did, why? I get her, but I don’t get them. And I get this, but I don’t get that. Why do you like me teacher, but you don’t like me?

I’m gonna not like you either. I’m smart and savvy. I’m gonna push the envelope ’cause you’re gonna let me. That communication and understanding kids, it’s not their folks, they’re just kids. They’re not innocent, but they’re [00:59:00] gonna, and they’re gonna push the envelope, especially in middle school, my favorite place to be.

But we have to understand if we see them as children, smart children who might wanna push it, catch it before they can, by creating norms, having that relationship with the parents. One of my favorite things to do is if in fact a child is unruly, it’s very simple. I have a yellow card in a red card in my classroom.

This is for ml. And if a child is acting the way that I know that the parents and I both know that the child can be, I simply put out the yellow card on their desk. They go, oh, Missy, because then you know that in soccer, the yellow card means a warning. They don’t get reprimanded, they get nothing. But I knew that child loves soccer or football, so they know that red card, I can just WhatsApp mama and just say, red card.

It’s all I have to say. And when I [01:00:00] create that, and it took almost a whole school year for it to happen, I’d say for probably two quarters for it to happen. By January when that yellow card went up, they knew. And that creates a culture. Things take time. Incremental is monumental. We can’t, we just wanna move that needle, create that safe space.

But I will never allow a teacher guilty as charged. I’m no innocent person. I have walked out and rolled my eyes. But a Jedi doesn’t roll their eye. They ask why? And what is a Jedi? It stands for the justice, the equity, and the differentiated instruction of a student with who’s duly identified, or a student who’s neurodivergent.

And if you’re a Jedi, you don’t roll your eye. You ask why. And if I leave my classroom, and I’m like, I go, why did I do that? Why did I do that? Why did I do that? Why I ask, why did I do that? Because I’m frustrated about him. Why? What did I do? [01:01:00] Did I use UDL? Did I differentiate? Did I give him extra time?

What strategies did I use? Did I what? What did I do? That’s what you have to think of. And then if you’re gonna roll your eye and somebody goes, what’s up to share this? Huh? And I go, yeah, whoa. Stop right there. Stop right there. What’s up, Dharius, right? Oh, deShar. Appreciative inquiry. He made such progress and it was great.

We had a little bit of a setback. No, it’s okay. Setback is a set, what is it? A setback is a setup for our comeback. That’s dharius tomorrow. See the difference of what just happened? And then they’ll hear it. Other teachers will, and they’ll start believing in the kids. Now, I know that sounds altruistic to some of you who might be rolling your eyes hearing this right now.

That’s it. A Jedi doesn’t roll their eye. They ask why. If you say that’s impossible, then it will be because you’re not creating that appreciative inquiry because every single one of these kids, every one of them, has a right to that [01:02:00] equitable education. So I hope some of these strategies are just the start.

Of the incrementalist monumental process, and maybe Mandi, you and I could start a community somewhere where people can actually value vent and not victim vent so that we can have solutions so that neurodivergent children can feel, seen, heard, and feel safe in classrooms and beyond. 

Mandi Morris: I was so encouraged by this.

I what you’re talking about is so powerful as an educator and you’re really talking about a conscious alignment and culture. It’s a decision. The culture that you set is a decision, and every interaction that you have with an adult, the child, you get to choose how you respond. You get to make that decision, and that’s what you’re saying is ask why.

Be curious about yourself. Be curious on your way home. Why did [01:03:00] that upset me so much? Why did that push me? Why did that feel like I just couldn’t take it one more time? Uh, you’re just, you’re talking about there’s also grace in that, right? We’re both gonna own, no one is getting this right every day. Not at home, not at school, but you try again the next day.

You reflect, you stay curious, you stay flexible. You’re open-minded. You are finding community, you’re finding people that you can have these conversations with. I just, I feel really encouraged by this conversation. I was so nervous going into this conversation, Dr. Drina. I told you, I, I’m like, man, I’m really nervous and I’m ending this conversation with you.

Feeling so encouraged. Just the educator in me is so excited for every teacher that’s going to hear this conversation and is going in the classroom tomorrow with curiosity, with openness, and I love this Jedi. Ask why [01:04:00] I love this. And for the parents that are listening from a parent perspective, give yourself grace and find your community, find your people and something else that you’ve said that’s so important for both parents and educators.

It takes time. It took two quarters for you to build a system that your students respected and honored, but you were consistent. 

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: 10 years later, I still have kids checking up on ways in which I did things with them, the yellow card and the red card, or the telling them that incremental is monumental or letting them know, don’t you victim vet with me.

I need you to value vent with me. Or the whole concept of being intrinsically motivated and not extrinsically motivated, knowing their neuroscience of their own brain, understanding their brain when they say, Missy, I got into an argument and my frontal lobe was just out of control. I know that’s where the love language is right here in my, [01:05:00] when we talked about neuroscience in the session, which also is a key factor.

A child needs to know the neuroscience. They need to know their own brains, the neurotransmitters, everything. If they are neurodivergent, they need to understand their own brain. Oh my gosh. What a great course or a lesson that would be for kids and also for yourself is what we talked about with the grace, your emotional intelligence.

Everything we just discussed with value venting over victim venting and understanding that it’s having that accountability partner to talk to you or the sense of community, giving yourself grace, the compassion, the empathy, trying the next day, finding a space to be like, but not within the walls of the classroom because it is healthy to let that go, but not to do it in the classrooms or around the classrooms with other people.

But creating that sentence frame of, I am concerned about sentence framing of appreciative inquiry that increases your own self-awareness to think constructively and [01:06:00] behave wisely, to use your thoughts correctly and build your own emotional intelligence. And you are modeling what is needed for children to see.

And innately you’ll start getting that and then kids will then feed off of what you have and that creates such a beautiful classroom. Beautiful classroom. It is possible if you believe. 

Mandi Morris: I am so thankful for this conversation. I’m thankful that we came back round two, and sometimes we have to be held accountable to each other too, and we did that today in our conversation.

We agreed at the beginning, let’s stay real, and I really appreciate that. Thank you so much, Dr. Dorina, for being here. 

Dr Dorina Sackman-Ebuwa: Thanks for having me. Really.