Navigating a Neurodiverse Household, with Bea Moise, MS, BCCS | EDB 282
ADHD self-advocate, autism mom, cognitive specialist, and parenting coach Bea Moise shares what she has learned from her neurodiverse household.
Beatrice (Bea) Moise, M.S., BCCS., is a Board-Certified Cognitive Specialist, Parenting Coach, author of Our Neurodivergent Journey and National Speaker. She created A Child Like Mine to educate parents of children with unique atypical brains that have both behavior & learning needs, while giving them the tools they need to be successful at home.
Bea has written for Autism Parenting Magazine, Charlotte Parent Magazine, Different Brains, Parents, PBS-Kids, The Everymom, and Verizon. She is a respected and trusted parenting coach and consultant in Charlotte, NC, and surrounding areas. Helping parents of children with Autism, ADHD and other behavioral challenges who are neurodivergent. Bea is frequently featured on WCNC Charlotte Parenting Today, and has been featured on Ballantyne Magazine, Mimosas with Moms, Peace & Parenting, People of Charlotte, & Scoop’s Successful Charlotte Women providing tips for parents.
Bea has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology; also, she also holds a Master of Science in Mental Health Counseling with a specialty of Applied Behavior Analysis. Bea and her husband have two children, Jacob, who is awesomely autistic, and Abby, who is simply marvelous!
For more about Bea: https://beatricemoise.com/
Bea’s book “Our Neurodivergent Journey” can be found on Amazon here.
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DR HACKIE REITMAN (HR):
Hi, I’m Dr. Hackie Reitman. Welcome to another episode of Exploring Different Brains. And today, we’re so lucky to be speaking with Bea Moise. And Bea is a board certified cognitive specialist, a parenting coach, and a self advocate all wrapped into one. Welcome Bea.
BEA MOISE (BM):
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
HR:
Thanks. So how are things up there in Charlotte, North Carolina?
BM:
Well, today the weather is beautiful. We don’t know that it’s fall yet. So we’re going between fall and summer. And today is a fall summer.
HR:
Introduce yourself properly. So tell our audience all about yourself.
BM:
Okay, well, I am Bea Moise. My name is Beatrice, but I go by b. And I am all that you said. I also am an author of our of a book called our neurodivergent journey that I wrote for other parents like myself who have a child on the spectrum, I have a child on the spectrum, I have ADHD. So I think I try to educate people on neurodiversity as best as I can, from a parenting perspective, from a personal perspective, and mom perspective. And just in general, I really try as much as I can to give information, I have a YouTube channel that I dedicate to educating people on unique learners, just people who are different in terms of their learning style, not less, but just different. Because I think I spend my whole life trying to be understood with how I acquire information. And I see the same thing with my son and my daughter. So then I really want to educate as many people as possible on how to teach and advocate and listening here to people who just acquire information in a way that’s not the neurotypical wait.
HR:
I like that tip our friend Temple Grandin says, different, not less, absolutely. Tell us how you received your diagnosis.
BM:
So fun, fun story. I didn’t know I had ADHD and dyslexia until I went to Well, I knew I had dyslexia back when I was in, I think elementary school or middle school because I just had difficulties obtaining information. And reading, I love to read, but for some reason, it was just a challenge for me. So I knew that but I thought that was my only learning difference was just dyslexia. I was just dyslexic. And I was okay with that. Because my mom never made a big deal about it. She was just like, okay, so words are backwards. So what, you know, like, she really just had the best approach to it, which was a no stress approach. Then when I got to grad school, and we were learning about learning differences, and we were learning about ADHD and neuro differences. Everything about ADHD, sounded like myself, like every single thing. I was like, Wait, that’s me. That’s me. That’s me. Like it was just like reading about myself. So then, of course, in true ADHD fashion, I hyper focus into learning anything and everything I could possibly learn about what it is that ADHD is, what does it mean? And it just, I don’t know, it felt like for the first time, I had an identity that I didn’t before. And in my life made sense, my brain made sense, the way that I thought made sense, and why I had certain difficulties and friendships and relationships and why, you know, I could do a lot one day and then completely be done with it. The next, um, why love to kill plants, but then still keep buying it because I feel like I’m gonna keep it alive. So, you know, like, that was really in grad school is when I learned and of course, later on in adult life, when my children got diagnosed when my son got diagnosed with autism, and my daughter had ADHD, that’s when I’m like, yeah, it’s, it’s definitely there. So that’s really how I discovered that I had ADHD.
HR:
So you’re seeing it from all angles? Well, yes. You know, the way I see ADHD, autism, dyslexia, why I see all of these neuro diversities is not occurring in isolation. I think they all kind of overlap with that. Has that been your experience too?
BM:
Absolutely. I think especially so my son has autism, and he has ADHD hyperactive. And sometimes when I when he is presenting a particular thing, it’s like, is this autism? Is this ADHD? Or is this Jake, you know, is this just you know, who you are in terms of a combination? And even myself, I struggled with truly owning fully certain, you know, parts of my diagnosis because I don’t feel like I struggled as much as other people with it. So I feel like well, I can’t take ownership of something, but I really don’t see that was, you know, a struggle for me. But when I go back and I look at the different things and my learning styles and all the accommodate As I was making for myself, I see that yes, I was struggling, I just didn’t realize it, but they overlap in so many different ways, especially with the anxiety piece, because a lot of it is just rooted in anxiety. And like we all have some form of anxiety, you know, my anxiety is a perfectionist, so I overdo everything, so that you know, I can control everything, you know. So then, you know, I see that time my anxiety manifests itself, my son tends to just shut down and he’s just like, Well, nothing’s happening, like, I’m just not gonna do anything. That’s how his anxiety manifests itself. You know, my daughter is a warrior, she’s anxious, he starts to worry about every single thing that you can possibly imagine. And if you didn’t know us individually, thought individual diagnosis, you would just say this is a family that’s anxious is an anxious family. But really, it’s our neurodiversity and neurodivergent ways is kind of overlapping one another and manifesting itself in a different way. But yes, they absolutely overlap.
HR:
So you’re good enough to use all of your own experience, and your education to help others. And as a parenting coach, one of your jobs, what is the one thing that you think is the most important advice you give? If you had to pick one thing?
BM:
I am going to sound like a broken record. Because I say this every time I’m asked this question, I answer it the exact same way. And it is acceptance. Once you accept the child that you have, it is a game changer. Once you recognize that this is what you have, this is who you have. This is the child that you have. This is the learning style that they have, once you accept it, all the pieces just come together, I think the reason I was able to thrive as much as I could with ADHD, my mom just accepted my quirkiness. And just really, I think she made excuses for it like, oh, that’s just Beatrice. That’s just Beatrice. So I really never felt like it was a bad thing. It was just yeah, that’s just who I am. So I’ve taken the same approach with my children. And the number one advice I think I try to drill into all of my clients head is the acceptance piece is what children are looking for. Because once they know you accept them for who they are, and how they are. Everything else is cake.
HR:
That is very well said. Now, let’s talk about the parents a little bit. Let’s talk about the importance of self care. For the parents out there. Many of them themselves are neurodivergent.
BM:
Yes, self care is difficult. And it’s hard to do, especially when you feel like your child is drowning. So then all you’re doing is throwing all the resources at them to make sure that they’re not drowning. But you don’t recognize that you’re at the bottom of the pool yourself. So you’re really throwing the resources up, you know, you’re not really throwing it down. So once you make the recognition of Listen, I have to also get out of here, so that I could provide more resources, because you’re only seeing what’s around you under the water, you’re not even seeing all the other things that exist on top and the chips and all the different things that can exist. So it’s so important for parents to get out from under the water, and really recognize you have to do something for yourself, you really have to put the oxygen mask on yourself in order for you to really be fully present and do all that you can do for your child.
HR:
Again, very well said You’re good. You’re very good.
BM:
Thank you.
HR:
Tell us about your book, entitled “Our Neurodiverse Journey”.
BM:
So my book, I it was basically it started off as a diary of just a record keeping of everything that I was learning from my son because when, you know, when Jacob was really little, he started to do extraordinary things when he was 15 months old. He could he could speak Mandarin. So we thought, oh my goodness, he’s just he’s a genius. This is fantastic. But what I knew was this was abnormal. Like I knew there was nothing. Something else was coming behind it. I didn’t know what was coming, but I definitely knew so I wanted to kind of monitor it and watch it in journalists. And as I started to journal it became more story and how it started to evolve more or less because Jacob also had regressive autism. So the Mandarin that he spoke, he lost language. So then we had to start back up with learning how to speak and doing all these different things. So I wanted it to be basically a diary of this was my journey with my son. And these are the things that we did and on top of the acceptance piece, so that’s chapter one in my book, if you when you if you purchase my book, you read chapter one, that’s all you need, because that’s really the most important thing. But after that, I dive into, you know, occupational therapy, speech therapy, all the different people that we saw, and what we did with that information, because it’s one thing to see these people, it’s another to do something with the information and how you apply it in your home. So I really have this applicable tip to how do you apply this at home? So OT is telling you to spin him? What does that look like, you know, like speeches saying work on words, what does that look like at home? How do you do that. So that’s what I did with my book is just this, our journey with learning, and also has the marital concept of just how I dealt with it with my husband and how he dealt with it on, you know, as this is his son, so Jake is my baby, but that’s his son. You know, that’s, that’s, that’s how we saw it. And those are two different ways of seeing the exact same person. And I had to learn to relinquish my baby, so he could raise his son. And, and that’s a different perspective from a mom, because I couldn’t understand what he was trying to do. Because that was my baby, you know? So that was a perspective of, you know, having him, you know, have equal say so, and a lot of the upbringing and things that was going on with Jake and how it impacted our marriage. And then later on, we brought Abby, my daughter, well, this is the only life she knows. So how does it impact the sibling dynamic? What is she learning from having a, you know, a brother on the spectrum where he’s not really a big brother? He’s really a little brother that’s older. So just really, how did she deal with that? So my book includes all of that, because it really was just is our journey, and I wanted everyone to just read about it. And hopefully, they can get some information that, you know, they could redirect their lives with. I truly wanted the ability to let people know that I understand from a professional perspective. But I also understand from a personal perspective, what it is to have a child on the spectrum. And it’s a great journey, really, it truly is. But you just have to be ready and prepared for it i Do you have a copy of it. It’s called “Our Neurodivergent Journey”. And I really dislike to give information and share and educate as many people on the neurodiverse brain as possible.
HR:
Well, I’m sure our audience is going to be watching this. They’re gonna learn a lot from it. And how can they learn more about you?
BM:
Well, they can go to my website, and it’s BeatriceMoise.com.
HR:
How do you deal with the hyper interests, while making sure the homework gets done?
BM:
Well, I figured out because of my own neurodivergent ways, I require a lot of breaks. So I need 20 minutes of something, then I need to walk, move, do something else, then I need 20 minutes of focus, and I need to walk, move and do something else. So really, our household is kind of run by this silent schedule. Well, we don’t have to do these things anymore, because my kids just run in a rhythm. But we have this hour on 20 minutes off hour on 20 minutes off because we are all neurodivergent. So if works really well for all of us. Although my daughter is in attentive so she can sit a lot longer. She definitely can sit and do what she needs to do, where me and my son cannot we require more breaks. So that’s really how we do it. We run on a schedule, and I live by schedules.
HR:
Tell us what it’s like in your neurodiverse household in terms of balancing everyone’s needs, and avoiding everyone’s triggers.
BM:
That’s a fun word, “triggers”. So though, the first thing I wanted to implement on our journey, which is this neurodivergent household was because my son has the most needs. I wanted to make sure that he did not dictate the tone of the house. That was my number one concern like it wasn’t all about the jig story. And then you know the supporting cast, it was not that’s not the story. We all have equal, say equal input and equal understanding of what’s going on. So because we all have such different needs. The first thing that we do in our household is we put our sensory needs first the because our sensory needs will dictate our triggers. So you know I love sounds in noise because I am a seeker, so is my son. He is also a seeker he and I are very loud people. However, my husband and my daughter are avoiders. They do not like noise, they avoided as much as they can. So they tend to want us to be quiet, I’m singing, my son is humming, we chew too loudly, there’s all these different things that are occurring. And to me, the absence of sound is discomforting to me, unless I’m working, if I’m working, I need silence. So for us, we have to bring in other things, we have a lot of sensory breaks, we have a lot of headphones in this household there in every single room, because we’re either seeking noise or avoiding it. And that is truly how we avoid our triggers is trying is managing our sensory seeking or sensory avoiding behavior. And also asking for time when we need it. When my son had fewer words, and he was limited verbal, we would have in this room call his quiet space, where when he would get overwhelmed, he would stay in the space and be loud and overwhelmed, that would trigger my daughter that would trigger my son. So we taught him how to be overwhelmed, but in a space of calming on his own. So we would redirect him into the sensory seeking room where there were toys and things that really brought him a lot of comfort. So then he wouldn’t trigger us because then we didn’t want to be in jail. You know, we didn’t want to be in prison, and be held hostage by this kid. So I mean, now he rarely ever uses that space. Because when he’s overwhelmed, he knows what to do. He just leaves and he finds comfort. And he comes back, my daughter is the opposite. When she’s overwhelmed, she requires comfort. So she wants a hug and a touch and a squeeze and a confirmation. So she will request can I just get a hug but no talking mommy, in those are exact words. Because I want to give advice. I want to say what’s going on. And that’s what she will do like she will request for it. So really we avoid our triggers by knowing the sensory need that is important at that moment for us.
HR:
Do you have any other books in the works?
BM:
I am working. I am working on another one. Yes, I definitely want to go more into the ADHD aspect, I think because that’s what we all share. And we and it presents itself so differently. I really would like to go a little bit deeper into that one because I’ve learned so much through my kids, because I get to see ADHD the early years where I was just experiencing it, but I wasn’t really watching it. And my mother doesn’t remember.
HR:
Well, it’s been a pleasure to speak with you Bea.
BM:
You too.
HR:
You certainly have a handle on neurodiversity, neurodivergent, and tools to help us all. Thank you so much. And congratulations on your book and everything we’re doing. You’re doing rather and we hope to see you again soon.
BM:
Thank you.
