Welcome to the Autism, ADHD podcast. I am so happy that you join me today. I want to take a moment and ask for your help. Please take just a second and give the podcast a five-star review.

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information. Thanks so much again for taking the time to give that five-star review. Now let's get

started. Hi everyone. I am thrilled that you join me today. We are going to talk about areas of self-advocacy.

Self-advocacy is an important skill for nerd-a-vurgent children to develop. It empowers them to express their needs, their challenges, and their preferences.

There's a really short, important episode on why kids don't self-advocate

that I released on December 5th, 2023. If you haven't listened to that episode already, it's a great

idea to go listen first. It's a quick one and it won't take long. Anytime we talk about self-advocacy, it's important

to remember that it's not just something the child or team needs to learn. There's actually a lot to

it. They can self-advocate a hundred times a day. And if parents, teachers, or caregivers, aren't paying attention,

if they're not really hearing them or believing them, all the efforts that these kids are

putting in to self-advocate are for nothing. They're going to stop. They won't learn to self-advocate.

They'll think it doesn't work anyway. That's what they tell

me. We need to make sure that we believe them and be open to understanding them. And when they say

something's hard, when we see that something's wrong, we need to recognize that they are struggling.

We need to believe them when they act in a way that looks like they're upset or that they're

mad, whatever that is, we need to be open to supporting them and advocating alongside them.

All of us, parents, teachers, therapists, all of us have had some experience on some level of

dismissing what a child is telling us in the only way they can tell us.

And I am including myself here.

Here's an example.

When my youngest, this was a few years ago, was really irritable when doing homework one night.

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