Can you advocate TOO much?

My son is a beautiful soul and like most of us creative types, is neurodivergent. He has a label of severe learning disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. I don’t love labels. They don’t capture the nuances of the human experience. They’re too boxed in for me. They are deceiving. A label can never tell the story of who your child is, what difficulties they face, and what their superpowers actually are! It can be insanely frustrating to be forced to use them as the only thing that gets your foot in the door. It’s great when they do tick the boxes you need in order to access supports and services, but often this takes years and years and years to accomplish. If you’re a parent of a neurodivergent kid, you know what I’m talking about!

We put in countless hours creating a safe environment for our children inside and outside of the home. It feels like the advocating never ends. So, when I got a call this week with a mix-up about which school we should be attending, I spiraled and advocated HARD!

However, 10 years of practice have taught me that you can’t be TOO much. In fact, being the squeaky wheel, does in fact, get the grease. So, I emailed as many people as I could think of to support our case, I dug up paperwor, I reviewed old emails, I found new email addresses, I sent old emails to the new email inboxes and made a few phone calls. I was not spared from my own person spiral that this was happening to us AGAIN, but I felt empowered to do whatever I could as his mom to insure he had the healthiest and best start to the school year.

And you know what happened? The error was adjusted and we remedied the situation within 24 hours.

Never feel like you are TOO much when you are advocating for your kiddo because there is no such thing! Stick to the facts, stay calm and positive, demonstrate a paper trail if you’ve got it, and keep showing up!

We are THE experts of what our kids need to be healthy and happy!

—Nessa

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