Green at School, RED at home… #ICantEven – ASD / SPD / Autism / Aspergers

So a big thing is just give your kid a break. That kind of seems like a no brainer, but there's a lot of parents out there that want to put on foot quote, fix their kid, or even parents that don't necessarily have that mentality, but they want to push their kid to reach their full potential because they know that their kid is capable of it.

And this goes for any kid not necessary. Children with autism, but you got to give your kid a mental break.

Hey friends. This is the finding Mikey podcast. Our family's quest to prepare our son Mikey for life. Mike, and from time to time, I'll be joined by my wife, Heather, or other family members and others for interviews and conversations. Now, while I may mention our son, you have a mic. And together we're on a journey to learn as much as we can so that we can understand how to best communicate and guide our kiddos into independent adulthood.

Thanks for tuning in.

I am joined by my friend Lindsay. Now we ran into each other in the photography world. And just as a, as a surprise, it was probably a couple of years ago. You know, I learned that you were. The special ed educator. And I don't really know much more about your background. The next is kind of your training and where you've been and things like that.

So would you mind taking a couple minutes just to share you know, your verbal resume? Yeah. So outside of the photography world I actually have a mental health background. I worked as a crisis counselor for tornado survivors in Tennessee in 2011, through 2012. I've worked with a multitude of different clients.

Per se. And now I am almost finished with my master's of education teaching special ed K through 12. I graduated in April, but I'm currently teaching fourth and fifth grade special ed at a charter school in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Great. What got you involved in this line of work? What brought you to helping kids cup and people.

Well, the special ed aspect of it, my grandma was actually a paraprofessional, which is just the term used for teachers aids within the special education departments. She did that until she retired. So before. Gosh, maybe 10 years, 12 years, something like that. She did it. And then I actually have two little brothers who have very minor, special needs, but they both have muscular dystrophy have been through speech therapy and things like that.

So that's kind of what got my heart into special ed. And then the mental health aspect of it came from my husband who actually has a master's in counseling as well. That's awesome. Did you and this question really just occurred to me because growing up and going to school, you know, I saw special EDS, you know, students and, and classes and, and of course buses and things like this.

Did you have to shed any sort of notions or, or biases to, to get involved here or was it more natural for you to just dive right in and try to be. For me, it was more natural because muscular dystrophy runs in my family. My uncles have it. I have some extended cousins that have it just kind of around that my whole life people with physical disabilities, more so than learning or anything else.

But because of that, I think it just opened up that compassionate part of me to everyone that has any type of disability, whether it be physical, mental learning unit. Got it. Okay. Well, I mean, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. So. Tell me, what your, what, what are you doing now? What's your, what's your focus?

I know you're dealing with, you know, later elementary school, age kids as well. And you've mentioned, you've dealt with kids ages six to 14. So what is it you're doing now? Yeah, so now I work with fourth and fifth graders. That's age nine through 12 on the young and older ends of it. But primarily.

9 10, 11 year olds. But I have students that have learning disabilities, other health impairments, which could be really anything that's not necessarily diagnosed that can be add things like that. I have a couple of autistic students, one more on the severe end one on the more mild end of the spectrum.

And then I even have kids that have some emotional disabilities as well. So let's focus in, on kind of the autistic kids here as well. And, and the reason, the reason I ask as a special ed teacher and thinking about Mikey, I'm trying to, to see if there are ways or tips really that you would give to a parent like me, or, you know, what are some things that you have done or some things that you've recommended or things that have been successful both that you have done and that you've seen successful parents of children.

You know that our special needs are on the autism spectrum. I guess what I'm talking about, or just accommodations that you would recommend for the parents at home, and then any other kind of thoughts around that as well. Right. So a big thing is just give your kid a break. That kind of seems like a no-brainer, but there's a lot of parents out there.

I want to quote on quote, fix their kid or even parents that don't necessarily have that mentality, but they want to push their kid to reach their full potential because they know that their kid is capable of it. And this goes for any kid, not necessarily. Children with autism, but you got to give your kid a mental break.

I mean, think about us when we're at work and we're overwhelmed and we're adults, and we can express that. I need a break. Like I need a mental break right now. Kids with autism can't necessarily express that they'll come out in. A quote, unquote, temper tantrum or acting out in some way or refusing to do something or crying or, you know, it can be a multitude of things that can set that off.

So. Give him a break, let him go play something that works a lot with us in the school systems is doing a, this for that. So you tell the kid, excuse me, if you want to play, I need you to work for five minutes. And at the end of five minutes, I'll give you a minute or two to play with whatever you want for.

These this amount of time. And then when that time is over, we're going to work for another five minutes and then another two minute break. And to us a minute or two may not seem like a long time, but to the kid that can seem like an hour. So. Well, those breaks is a key thing. They keeping their attention as well.

So we do that and I just keep reminding Heather, she reminds me, it's like, when then, you know, it's like, when, when you do this, then we'll do that kind of a thing. Right. And I know that that, that tends to work as well. But when you mentioned give, you're giving your kid a break, I'm like, shoot, when did we get a break?

Right. I feel like we're always redirecting Mikey and. I don't know how to give him a, you know, like literally go in the backyard. Well, that means I have to make sure he's not climbing on top of the play structure. I have to make sure he's not climbing on top of the fence, getting over to the neighbor's yard.

I got to make sure he's not putting his hand into the dark spots of the fence where I know there are wasps because I've been attacked. Right. Right. You know, there's a lot of sort of safety things there too. So, you know, maybe, maybe we can get to some, some thoughts around that as well, but there never really seems to be.

You know, there is a break for them. I'm just wondering how to handle or balanced the break with us as well, because if I get frazzled or Heather gets frowns holder, you get frazzled. I mean, we snap we're human, right? So, you know, the, the wind man or this, for that I think is, is, is a really good tip. So.

Do you, do you have kind of a rule of thumb? Like as far as, you know, how long to let them, you know, what the task should look like or feel like before they get you know, like, all right, so, you know, I need you to clean up. I don't know, help me clean up the table and then you can go out and play. Well, the table task is like two minutes and then outside play.

Is that what? 10 minutes? Two minutes also. What are your thoughts on that? A lot of that is modifying the task for what you know they can do. So if you know that clearing a table full of glassware could result in catastrophe, then be like, okay, as soon as you clean up all the forks, then you, and put them in the sink, then you can go do this.

And then as soon as. Your time is up playing. I needed to come back and pick up the spoons or whatever, things like that. So modifying a task to where the child can feel like they're being independent and helpful while one, keeping them safe, keeping you guys sane by not having to worry about freaking something.

And then, you know, if it takes longer, it takes longer, you know? You got to work with the kid and especially a kid like Mikey, who's so young, they're not going to be able to keep focus for a super long time and clear an entire table of a family, for sure. Well, so let me, let me pause you there. So as a matter of fact, we kind of learned this through my oldest son as well.

Like you, you almost had to write down the list. Like here are the things, you know, and as a teenager it's like, right here are the four things you need to do before you can go out tonight or go hang out with friends or whatever. Right. And, and I think that prepared us very well because it was frustrating to be like, dude, go clean your room and then you can go and then you go look in the room and it's like, well, I picked up my clothes.

Like this shirt, the rest of the clothes were everywhere else. Right. Or, or whatever. Right. So, you know, we've learned that with Mikey, we do, we do break the tests. Up a little bit like that, but it's literally like, okay, dude, let's get let's clean the table, which he can help with. He understands that he, he always clears his plate anyway, and then sometimes they'll help with other people too.

But if you string three things together, he's lost like two as the max, it seems. Do you think there's, do you think there's a way to sort of grow that over time to where it'll eventually become three things and then it'll eventually become four? Yeah. A good way to do that is visuals. So what our kids with autism are very visual.

They can't remember that you said. Parks then plate then cups. They remember forks. Then there was something else, but I don't remember what it was. So if you guys make a visual chart, like a chore chart and there's tons of things on the internet. If you look up I forget the exact name of it, but picked something pictogram I think yeah.

Is it's just the iPad app. I've see. Well, there's one that is, but there's also these little, like, characters that you can print out and laminate them or put Velcro on and whatnot. So then you can have these items that are pertaining to your family, specifically your chores and things that you guys do, and then just throw felt, or sort of up there on the back of them and put them on this chart.

So then he can see, oh, I do this. Then I do this and then we can go do that. And it's something that your kid can revert to and. I remember like, oh, you know that you're supposed to do something else. Do you remember what it was? No. Okay. Let's go look at the chart and then they have a visual for it, rather than you having to keep repeating yourself over and over again.

So we've, we've experimented with some of those, but we haven't, we haven't actually broken down his day. Like he does love routines. And I know that that's pretty common for, I mean, I think a lot of kids. Do well under routines, even kids that are wired normally, right. They just feel comfortable and protected and safe within a routine.

Right, right. But I think obviously more so for children on the spectrum are there, are there any thoughts? I mean, we don't have a very Hm, like Monday, isn't the same every Monday, Monday and Tuesday. Aren't the same usually. I mean, sure. We get up, we, we eat, we do things and we sleep. But the routine isn't the same each day.

Do you, do you find that it's it's it would be good for us to kind of build in a routine each. Even if it's a small routine, that's usually helpful, like, for example, the table again. So if you have a routine that every night, no matter what you did that day, even if you go to taco bell and bring food back, might be helps.

Clear the table of the trash or the plates and cups or whatever you guys have on there from Darren at night. And obviously it'll be different if you go out to dinner, he's not going to help with that. But when you're at home creating small routines, like that will definitely help. How does that help when you say that helps?

Like what does that do? I mean, so what it does is it gives the child. Not only a sense of normalcy and it sets expectations for them where they otherwise may not know what those expectations are. If that makes sense. Yeah. The, well, let me run this by you because it occurred to me not too long ago that.

If we, if I were wow, I would come out of the grocery store. Right. And I would just be beat because what should have been a 10 minute trip was a 30 minute trip because I had to redirect Mikey a thousand different times and I got frustrated. And, you know, he got in trouble in the store. That kind of a thing.

Right? Well, I had occurred to me that I'm like, I didn't tell him when we were going in. This is how I wish for him to behave. Right. And ever since I caught on to that and had been trying to say, okay, dude, we're going to head on in here. Here's our list. I like, I let him hold my phone so he can help us check stuff off.

Like we do this at Costco every Sunday. Right. You know, and I'm like, look, you're going to sit in the cart. You can choose whether you want to sit up top or down in the area and get surrounded by all the food. Right. It's up to you. But I want us to just focus on the list and see if we can get out of this.

Quickly right. Instead of stopping and showing everybody look, I have an alley on my thumb, or, Hey, take a look at this lizard that I got, or did you know that Barney says, and then a two minute monologue on what Barney says to every single person we pass. You know what I mean? So, you know, is that, is that kind of the practice that you're referring to is really just to have a, a fixed set of expectations.

Are consistent. I mean, I sound like I'm sort of stating the obvious, like, duh. Yeah, Mike, duh. But is that, is that where you're trying to say? Yeah, that's exactly it. So setting the expectations for children with autism is huge. Like the student in one of my classes, Who is a little more severe on a spectrum.

He, he doesn't like music, so this is a perfect example. He hates music. He's afraid that it's going to get stuck in his head and it's going to be on repeat in his head forever. So he hates it. And when he first started school with us, he would scream and cry and. Scared the bejesus out of the other students in the class, to be honest, because of his like wild sounds.

Well, we had to set expectations. Like, you know, you can't necessarily get away from me is like, we will do our best to not play it when you're here, but there's going to be times that a student's singing or you hear music on a phone or on the radio or whatever it might be. This is what you do instead of screaming.

You can cover your ears so you can't hear it as much. And then say, please stop singing, or please turn the music off. So by telling people that you're not scaring them and you're not being rude, but you're. Telling them what you need. And that actually has been huge in all of our classes. If a kid is even humming, he'll cover his ears and he'll be like, please stop singing.

And then that usually alerts the teacher that someone's doing something to set this kid off and we can stop and look at whatever student's doing and be like, Hey. This obviously upsets him. Can you please stop? And I stop and then everything's fine. So that it doesn't turn into this huge scene. Like it was in the beginning of school.

So that brings up another interesting sort of line of thought here. And maybe, maybe we can tackle it on another, on another show or something, but really to help a child be able to identify and then verbalize a trigger for them. Lena, we have a, we have a friend who's whose child for whatever reason, like doesn't like the color.

So, if you were to just like, literally, you know, we were at the pool one time and, and you know, we have the, the what do you call them a pool noodle. Right. And we had a green one, a blue one and a yellow one. And it's like, oh, well, we're all gonna share. And you know, their child was like, no, that's my trigger.

That's my trigger. And we're like, okay, all right. And we're like, which one would you like? And it's like, I'll take anyone, but the yellow one. Right. So to me, that's like a, that's like a high level of. Sort of maturity, like self-awareness really so, you know, is that something, is that something you think you can address?

Is there, are there strategies to maybe help us kind of figure out, I mean, anyway, maybe we're veering too far off of it. I'll, I'll pay attention to comments and see if that's something maybe we should talk about too, but I would be interested in, in that because I think change. For most kids with autism, like any sort of change and environmental change and acoustic change a, you know, like Mikey's triggered by just a lot of motion and a lot of, a lot of noise.

So going into a new kindergarten environment was way overwhelming for him, but he doesn't know how to risk. He doesn't know how to vocalize it or verbalize it except. Okay. I got to go touch everything. Like a dog would smell everything. That's what he had to do. He had to go touch everything all the time and flight risk, you know, he started to elope and things like that.

Anyway, I think I veered way in a tangent that I, that I, that I think maybe we could explore later, but sorry. So back to back to setting expectations and, and you said that that's, that's huge, that's like Donald Trump saying you setting expectations is it's huge. It's real big. We do expectations setting bigly.

You know, I think. 'cause when I think of when I think of you know, sort of this for that, or when then, or sort of a schedule chart from Mikey, I'm like, how do we standardize that? So that we have a little bit of flexibility throughout the day, you know, like that it's constant throughout sort of the year, you know, like some, some parts of the year he has school, some parts of the year, he has vacation some parts of the year.

It's just we're home, you know? So, if, if you were to advise me. You know, now that Heather is homeschooling M and a from right now. How much of his day should be, you know, following the bouncing ball of here's step one and here's step two, and then we're going to do step three and then we'll do step four, you know, where it's like task, task, break, task, break, task break, you know, do you have any thoughts around that?

Yeah, and I mean, that goes back to just giving, not only your kid, a mental break, but you guys as well, you don't have to structure your entire life story around. A routine. But if there's specific things like if Heather teaches math on Monday, but not on Tuesday and she teaches science instead try to keep to that type of schedule that routine.

Then when. Obviously, this is nearly impossible on a day-to-day basis, but if, you know, ahead of time that there's going to be a change in the standard schedule. Like I teach math on Monday science on Tuesday, if you're gonna switch it up and be like, Hey, I feel like we're going to do art on Monday and history on Tuesday that can completely throw a kid into a spiral that you don't know how to get them out of.

Right. But prepare your kid for that. So tell them, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. What are you think about that? Do you want to do this? And like just kind of prepare the student for the change. So like, It doesn't have to be a week in advance. It can be the day before be like, Hey, I know we typically do this on that day, but I'm thinking about doing this, is that okay?

And if, I mean, you can kind of feel it out and obviously you guys are the parents, so you can't let your kid control everything. But if there's things like. A certain subject that you want to switch up or a certain score that he does on a daily basis. You want to switch it out or not have him do it or have one of your girls do it instead.

Just explain to him, Hey, this is going to change. We're good. You can start out slow. Not necessarily like a. By the way in five minutes, we're not doing what we normally do, because again, you couldn't send your kid spiraling and UN. No, how to get them out of it and it might make you join them. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. True. Well, definitely. So if, if I could, if I had to sum it up like accommodations, it sounds like, and this is me trying to really make it simple. Accommodations to me are really taking a step back or taking a moment to look at the thing that you're asking them to do. And how could you make it a little less?

Distracting, like thinking of the process, right. And make it more accomplishable. Right. It's like a little bit of a training. Well, cause we, we had a, we had a conversation off, you know, off the record earlier about, you know, accommodations and you said, do you know if your child brings home, you know, a homework sheet and it's multiple choice, five questions, four options on each one, go ahead and strike out a couple of each option.

In order to eliminate sort of the clutter, get rid of the, obviously confusing one, that's there to, you know, confuse them and, and give them, you know, give them the opportunity to be successful. And I understand the power behind that. Right. We want our children to have success so that they're not dreading a worksheet or anything else like that.

You want them to be able to accomplish this stuff and feel like they are, you know, fitting in and being able to progress too. So I think if I had to, again, to sort of sum it up, it's just taking. Taking things that is being asked of them. And. You know, looking at it in its parts and seeing how you can break it up into other little steps or to remove the things that could be confusing or triggering for them until they're prepared to kind of take that next challenge on.

Is that, is that about right? Yeah. That's exactly it. The homewrecker or even other chores that your child may do something that one of my student's parents actually did that I found out about recently is we were sending home multiple choice or not until choice, sorry, multiplication word problems for them to work on.

Well, the word problems weren't making any sense. It was like Sally buys two seashells and. Tammy, let me, let me stop you right there. Sally sells seashells. She doesn't buy seashells. She sells seashells. She doesn't buy them. All right. That's what would throw me off right there. I'd be like, I completely, I protest this question entirely because Sally sells seashells by the seashore.

She doesn't buy seashells. Next question.

Storyline made no sense to my student. Well, what his parents did is they changed the wording to fit halo. This kid is obsessed with halo. He draws halo, he plays halo. He does everything halo. So is change it. I don't know the character. So. This is going to be totally wrong, but there was a master chief, right?

They basically changed it to say shooter one, bought two shells, bullet shells, shooter two but six shells. How many shelves did they buy? So by just changing the wording of it, but keeping the numbers the same, the student was still able to do the exact problem. But in a way that made sense to them, it can go for a household chore.

If Mikey likes captain America, it'd be like, all right, you're going to be captain America today. What would captain America do? He's gonna fight crime by clearing the table. All the evil forks, you know, things like that can really get. Child with autism excited. You have to get on their level. A lot of kids with autism have one specific thing that they're interested in, or even a couple of things that they're really interested in.

So by taking those and making that the. Idea behind what their tort is, can really help get them motivated as well. So here's the, here's my apprehension of putting the the persona of a superhero, which he does love captain America, by the way on him, is that he already, you know, I took him with me to Lowe's and home Depot to pick up a couple of things.

And he happened to catch a little gecko in our house, which if you follow us on social media, you'll see frogs, lizards stick bugs, like anything that he can catch, he's going to bring it in the house and. I mean, he's literally tried to catch a bird the other day, which that was kind of funny. Can't catch a bird, but go ahead.

Yeah. Burn off some energy. Why not? But you know, when we're out in town, he's he stops as many people as he can to talk about, Hey, look, here's this gecko that I found, he looks like he's gonna, you know, he looks like he's hurt. I'm going to take care of him. I found him by our cat tree. I didn't want our cat to hit him.

I collect a lot of these. I have a bearded dragon, his name's UNO. And I mean, he will just say the same kind of story. To everybody that he can. Right. So my parental apprehension is like, okay, do I want to add? And I just subtly rolled my eyes as I said this. Okay. Do I want to add a superhero persona that he's going to start to carry with him and the grocery store and be like, you know, just another thing that's going to sort of slow down our task while we're out there or.

I mean, maybe I just need the counseling on it, where I need to say, I need to budget the hour to go to the grocery store for four items with him. You know what I mean? Maybe that's maybe that's what I need. So when you talked about that, I'm like, I don't know if I want to add fuel to the you know, sort of the, the, the fire, but I understand what you're getting at right.

Is to get into his vocabulary and into his world where it's fine. And it's a little bit exciting and it gets him thinking, right. You're, you're trying to switch from being someone who's authoritarian. It's like, you need to pick up everything on the table to more of a coach of like, Hey, what would we need to do to clear the table clean right.

Different approach. But, you know, and in your layering on there, I love it. I do. I'm probably gonna try it. Oh, that too goes back to setting expectations so he can set the expectations. Every time you clear the table, you can be captain America, but when we go to the grocery store, your.

Okay, I got it. So I'm going to split his personality into two. No, I'm kidding. It's a, should I start buying medication now? No, I'm joking. I'm joking by stock. Yeah, exactly. No. So those are, those are all good. I think, to put on a mindset of accommodations, that's, that's really good. And I think, you know, there's so many different areas that we could delve into, like, you know, how to deal with a meltdown and how to.

Well hockey, we even dealt with it just this morning. You know how to deal with what one parent said over another parent said at a different time, or like what Heather had said and set the expectation. And then I was like, no, no, no, we're heading to do this thing. And he couldn't vocalize. He couldn't tell me like, no mom said that once I got my shoes on and a jacket on and pants, I could go outside and look for frogs and I could get one frog and then we're done.

Right. Mom set. The great expectation. Dad didn't know. And we can't always communicate that way. Right. So by, by best parents. So, you know, I don't, I didn't, I didn't even think to be like, okay, why are you doing this? What did mom say? What's, you know, what was, what was your last directive? You know? So I think that, you know, those accommodations are good area to focus on just having.

I guess just getting stuff done. Right. Getting any task done. So that's real good. Well, look, we've been, we've been at it for about a half an hour right now, which I think is perfect and awesome. I appreciate the feedback there is there, is there any parting words of wisdom that you'd give as someone who's done this, you know, who does this professionally, who, you know, takes the time to, to help kids that, you know, Aren't there, you know, aren't their children, but you obviously care about any, how do you have any tips for, for parents and you know how to, I don't know.

We need some encouragement from time to time, you know, our medications, he ended it at the end of the day, sometimes a bottle of wine or a bottle of beer, glass of wine. Wow. Sleeping aid. No, I mean, what I tell all my parents. Just try to remember that. Just like you need a break, you need a break to let them be a kid.

Don't take it too seriously. And you know, you can't invent the wheel overnight and don't try to reinvent the wheel either because there's so many resources out there. A lot of times, people that are in your own network already might have resources for you, or even just be someone good to bounce ideas off of.

And don't be afraid to ask people. I mean, the worst I can do is say no, and that's not that bad. So. You're not out anything you're maybe out five minutes for questions. So, you know, don't be afraid to ask questions, go online, look for resources. And just let your kid be a kid diagnosis or not. They're still a kid.

So they're gonna have kid attributes that may come off as seeming like it's autism, but it's not. Every boy Mikey's age is a spazz. Just a fact. I have a very loving term for my students. I call them spousal Lopes. They're like little spazzy deer. And so, you know, just let them be spazzy. Let them do their thing.

As long as they're not hurting anyone hurting. Anything or themselves, then just let them go for it. Let them get some energy out and there'll be all ready to come back and work more. Once they're done. Great. Well, I mean, and if you have nobody to reach out to, we, you know, you can connect with us in a number of different ways through the podcast, come to finding mikey.com, happy to happy to talk with you.

Happy to carry on a conversation as well. Happy to try to point you to people that may be sharing the same same concern here as well. So there, there is a huge community out there and I'm, I'm happy to see that we're very supportive of each other. And, you know, if anything, just listening and laughing at it also, and just kind of putting it in perspective, it's like, you know, I get, I catch so much crap from people when they're like, so let me get this straight instead of helping them off of the dangerous roof of the meat of the play structure, which you wanted to do, you actually made the time to grab the camera and take the picture first.

Okay. All right. So think about that. You know, you, you know, he was safe enough for you to say, hang on, don't move. I'm going to go grab the camera while he's 18 and a half 20 feet up in the air. Right. But you still freaked out because he was up there, like pick one, you know? So I've had people holding me accountable on that too.

And I think that that's what that's what I love about our community here too, is just being able to put it into perspective and, you know, have someone else break it down. It's not that serious. As Heather says, it's age appropriate behavior, right? 66 years old. He's six years old. So let it go. Yeah.

Cool. Well, it's kind of funny. And as we wrap, I'm going to include these, this picture right now on the website, finding mikey.com on the show notes for this episode which will be episode three. And it's actually Mikey wearing his captain America hoodie, which if you pull over the hood part, it's got like the mask that covers his eyes and he can see out.

But Friday, today they, they tend to do something fun at a very interactive place. And today they're at the Thinkery in Austin and he's messing around with some PVC pipes and like, balls ping pong balls and air and stuff like that. So he gets to route stuff around, but I'll I'll include that on there too.

I just think it was it was pretty apropos, you know, we're talking about captain America and boom, there he is. So, so cool. Well, Lindsay. Thank you very much. I appreciate you beyond the episode today. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts around you know, autism and, and the accommodations that we can give to our kids.

And honestly, you know, I see this spreading out into my daughters. I mean, there, you know, so far as we can tell they're wired mostly normally they're, you know, they're not as spazzy at all either. And that's probably just because they're girls, but giving them some accommodations too, wouldn't wouldn't hurt.

I think it could help eliminate some of the stress that they may encounter as we're asking him to do a lot of stuff. So thank you for your time. I appreciate it.