Jana Fuchs: Weaving Strength and Positivity through the Family Tapestry of Autism and ADHD

Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. I'm very proud to have the
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Not Me the World? Podcast, hosted by Tony Mantor, Broadcasting
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Hopefully you'll gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding
for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome
to Why Not Me the World. Today's guest is a Fuchs.
She's a clinical psychotherapist and she's also a coach for
mothers raising neurodivergent children. The information she has is purely outstanding.
So thanks for coming on.
Yeah, thank you for having me. It's my absolute pleasure.
Absolutely, it's great to have you here. My first question
is do you have autism in your family and is
that what led you to become a coach.
So I have two kids, one of whom, my oldest,
is autistic with severe ADHD and he's also gifted. So
one of these you know, kind of typical what we
used to call Aspergers, really really bright. And then I
have a younger, quote neurotypical daughter.
So what led you to believe that your son might
be autistic?
Well, it's a great question.
So when my son was first evaluated by a neuropsychologist
at age six and a half, I, because I have
a background in clinical psychology, I said to my husband.
From the time my son was three years old, I said, please,
just like revoke my license if we finally take him
to be evaluated, because you have to at least be
six and a half here in Illinois to get the
neuropsycheval for ADHD.
I said, if he has not ADHD, take my.
License away, because this kid like checks every box. Sure enough,
he got that diagnosis. Nothing came up at that time
that would have warranted any further assessment for autism, though
we did observe, you know, just that he was just
kind of like a quirky kid. He had some friends,
he liked to mix it up, but a lot of
times he also just preferred to play on his own.
When other kids started doing group projects, he always kind
of just preferred to do it on his own. And
he took a longer time to move out of the
parallel play phase where you know, like each kid's kind
of doing their own thing. By age six, they kind
of start to play in groups more, but he still
just kind of preferred to do his own thing.
Again, no one really thought anything of it.
Okay, in his own way though, when he decided he
wanted to engage socially, was pretty outgoing, really articulate, okay,
But as the years went by, I started to kind
of notice an increasing gap in what we would consider,
you know, quote typical social behavior, especially as we got
closer to like age ten. And that's when I thought
to myself, you know what worth the while to get
him reevaluated?
And I was right, Okay, you get that diagnosis. He's
autistic and ADHD as well. I've talked with several people
that tell me the ADHD will pull one way, the
autism will pull them the other way, and they have
to figure out how to work. How does he deal
with that?
Yeah?
So actually it's so funny because right before I was
talking to you, I was on a call with someone
else talking about the very same kind of question. So
in my son's case, I actually think that ADHD works
for him to his advantage.
Well, obviously it.
Has some areas that it needs support with that can
frustrate him, but the ADHD part gives him this extra
added requirement for increased need for stimulation, and so as
he's gotten older.
It's kind of helped with his social skills because.
It's made him one of the more outgoing autistic people
that I know that I've met.
And he just does it in his own way. He
just socializes in his own way.
But he's so outgoing because he kind of needs that stimulation.
So he's more of an extrovert than an introvert.
He's an extrovert. He's a total extra.
Does he have any issues with eye contact or anything
like that, because I know some people do.
Yeah, so also a great question. At times, yes, but
most of the time not.
Okay.
So this is another reason why, like if you were
to draw, you know, aven diagram of ADHD and autism,
there's such a huge overlap in the middle, and so
many of the quote unquote you know features can present
kind of the same, like on the surface.
It's really it can be really tricky to differentiate.
And I now have spoken to so many parents who
their kids were first diagnosed as ADHD, and then as
their kids got older, it kind of became increasingly evident
for various reasons that this can't all just be explained
by ADHD.
Okay, So now you have a younger daughter, yes, what's
the age difference between them?
Yeah, two years, ten months?
Okay. You have a neurotypical daughter, yeah, an autistic ADHD son.
So how do they get along?
Oh?
You know, ask me on any given day, I'll give
you a different answer. Okay, overall, I will say, overall,
they have a sweet and loving relationship. It's changed over
the years at different ages. So he is, I will say,
he is an incredible big brother. He is, by leaps
and bounds, my more empathic child. He's really generous, he's
really patient. My younger one, the neurotypical one, she kind
of she's one of these really strong personality types.
She's going to be a girl boss, you know, she
already kind of is.
Okay, he's really patient with her, so thank god that
kind of works. She gets to have the space that
she wants and the attention she wants, and he kind
of graciously gives that to her. Okay, at times it
does make us feel protective of him. Sure, So yeah,
balancing right, it's not just one of them who has needs.
Just because one is neurodivergent and one is neurotypical, right.
Doesn't mean that they both don't have needs that need
to be attuned to in their own unique ways.
Yeah. And the reason why I asked that is because
I interviewed a lady that had three autistic brothers. So
she wrote a book about it. Yeah, at times she
would feel like she was the odd person out because
her brothers got most of the attention. And even though
that she knew her parents cared for her and all that,
she had to fight for that attention. And it created
some problems, but not a lot of problems. They worked
it all out and they're still close. Yeah, sometimes that
dynamic can create underlying issues totally.
And I will say as a parent, it's always a
balancing act of making sure that you're not missing certain
things that a child. One child needs, right, and so yeah,
it's really interesting. I was starting I was going to
say a few minutes ago that when my son was
about from ages like four through I would even say
like eight, his level of need was much higher, Okay,
like his nervous system become you know, really dysregulated understandably
right right right before we fully understood the specific supports
he needed because we didn't yet know he was autistic.
And also just.
Age, I think he's matured a lot, just as he's
gotten older. Right, he's he's now eleven, he's kind of
like mellowed like a fine wine.
Okay.
Now my daughter's at the age where she has a
lot of she's got a lot of drama, she's got
a lot of like once in eight, and he's just.
Kind of like chill.
So I think part of it is also just like
age dependent.
Yeah, I'm really glad that you brought that up. That
was my next question was about his age. Yeah, so
he's eleven years old, he's growing up, his homeowns are
starting to kick in. He's almost a teen. Sometimes that
creates a lot of dynamic. How is that affecting him
or is it affecting him at all?
Great question? So, man, I'm scared to jinx myself. Knock
on wood.
He is doing fabulously and I don't want to say
anything that's going to embarrass him, but I'll just say
that as he moves into his almost teen.
Years, I can't believe it.
And it's like excited, like he's excited to be hitting
at a lescens and feeling a little more manly.
And yeah, well we'll.
See as he you know, fully officially becomes a middle schooler, right,
But yeah, so far, I think he's kind of loving
this space. I think he has a confidence now and
a calm about him that he didn't used to.
That's awesome. Now, some autistic people have issues with textures
of clothes or food. Does he have anything along that
line at all that affects him?
You know, he's really fortunate he doesn't have too many
of those. The one thing he's he's occasionally sensitive to
certain smells and occasionally sensitive to noise. So like, for example,
my daughter really wanted to see of course she's an
eight year old girl, she really wanted to see.
The Tailor Swift movie concert movie.
We didn't spend the money to take out to one
of the big gun starts, but we did take our
to the movie.
With the whole family.
My son normally sits through movies pretty well if it's
something that interests him.
But I think between the fact that.
It didn't interest him and it was loud music, right,
that music kind of music feels grating on him unless
it's like his video game.
Music that's his preferred music of choice.
Sure, so he did have to put on headphones and
eventually just like he was like, I can't take this,
I just even with the headphones, I gotta leave.
So one of us took him out.
And then you know, sometimes in restaurants, if there's a
very strong smell. I remember we were at one last
summer and the home miss had a very strong garlicky smell.
And he was like, I got to get out of here.
And so we do what we have to do. We'll
take him out.
Any bullying or any other issues in school as far
as that goes, oh, that is.
Of course every parent's you know, concernment.
Here will say, there had been a few incidents that
semed to have, thank god, not traumatized him, but that
did bother him, and that we did talk about. And
you know, I stressed to him because in both cases
he didn't tell us until like months after, right we
really kind of stressed to him how important it is
to tell us right after, like as soon as it happens.
So that we can help him first and.
Foremost to just kind of like have a safe place
to talk about it, to process it, but also if
there's some sort of way that we need to intervene
to let teachers know or let staff know what's going
on so they can be on the lookout for it.
Luckily, right now he goes to a school where I
know that he is.
Not alone and being the only child who is neurodivergent
in his classroom and he's got an amazing team of teachers.
He goes to a public school, and because he's really
intellectually right, he tested into you know, it's like an
advanced curriculum, So it was in fifth grade, but everything
they learned is in sixth grade, right, And then he's
got the support of his special ed teacher to kind
of help him with the attention on task part and
to kind of also just help sometimes when there's some
social cues that he might be missing things like that.
Well, I'm glad you brought that up about the school system,
because that was going to be another question that I had,
because sometimes parents forget they have to be advocates for
their kids, not going to attack the school system. And
then once they become more advocates and they start talking
to the teachers and letting them understand, sometimes things change.
Sometimes they don't, but hopefully in most cases they do.
And it's always good that if you've got a school
system that you can talk to and build a relationship
with so that they understand the needs of your child.
Yeah, one hundred percent. And I'll be really clear, we.
Didn't just like fall into this ideal little situation. It
took some real work, you know, to your point to
have us kind of learn about what options were available
to him, what the steps were, because there's a lot
of steps right as you probably know by me of
getting an IEP or you know, individualized educational plan in place.
And so we did end up making the investment to
work with an educational advocate, which was one of the
best decisions we made, because parents don't know what they
don't know, right.
I'm a psychotherapist. I know features or quote symptoms to
look for.
I know how to process feelings. I don't know about
educational law. That's not my field, right, and I and
so and I don't know what services exist at school.
So having someone in our corner who has observed our
child at school right, who can then help us to
be the advocates we want to be, has made such
a huge difference. And thank god he's he just he
has an amazing, amazing team of teachers.
He really does.
That's just so good to hear. It really appears that
you've adjusted well, he's adjusted well, and you've got things
kind of under control for the moment.
We'll see how teenage years.
Go absolutely correct, that's when things really start to kick
in for sure. Yep, So how was it at first?
You said that because you have the background that you have,
you knew that something just wasn't quite right. So when
you finally did get that autism diagnosis, how did you
handle that? And how did you and your husband put
together a plan that you could develop to get you
where you are today?
Tony's such a great question.
Oh, it was like hard for me not to get
emotional as you were even just asking that.
And this is part of the reason why I do.
The work that I do as a coach to help
parents kind of especially during that time where you're trying
to navigate the diagnosis and then after the fact kind
of metabolizing it and coming up with the plan.
It's a really emotional time, it is.
So there was for sure, And this isn't something I'm
going to go there because this isn't something that is
openly spoken about as often as it should be.
It is totally.
Normal for parents to experience a sense of grief, right,
grief of the way that they fought their easy, peasy,
straightforward neurotypical child's life was going to look yes, right,
the one that when the you know, mother was pregnant,
and they had this whole kind of life envisioned right
where you could go anywhere and do anything and it
would just kind of be natural and easy. You know,
you have to give yourself space to grieve exactly that
things are.
Going to look different.
And we in this part of the world don't do
grief very well.
We don't acknowledge grief.
We don't acknowledge grief when someone dies, right, We give
someone like a month or two to kind of just
like lick their wounds, if that, and then we expect
that life go back to normal.
So I think I kind of moved through that part.
I think. I think because I.
Had a hunch deep down for several years before he
officially got the autism diagnosis, I think that I had
started that process, you know, several years in advance that
by the time we finally got the diagnosis. For me,
it kind of actually felt like validation, right, whereas I
think for my husband it was more about grieving and accepting, right.
And so that added a whole other layer. Sure, because
we were in.
Different thoughts of our processing.
I was going into action mode again because I think
I had already gone through the grief and you know,
coming up with, Okay, what are we going to do
at school, what are we going to do about.
Social skills groups? And how can we just help.
Them to feel you know, happy and as a justed
as he can possibly feel, and successful as he can feel.
And so that's kind of the mode that I went into,
and then my husband joined me, I would say, not
that far behind.
Well, that's really good to hear, because, as you know,
there's a high divorce rate among parents that have autistic children. Yeah, yep,
And of course one of the biggest issues is the
parents just aren't on the same page on how to
raise their child.
Yeah.
The mother is usually trying to address it on a
daily basis and figure things out. The father, not all
of them, just don't get it, and they have a
tough time rational and putting everything together because sometimes they
just don't realize that their child isn't being bad, they're
just having a lot of difficulties.
Yeah.
Then you add that all together and it really makes
things overwhelming for a lot of parents.
You obviously know a thing or two about this, Yes,
I mean you've spoken to enough people now, yeah, one
hundred percent, and you know, first and foremost you obviously
have to consider what the marriage looked like before this
information came to be right, Right, if you didn't have
the kind of foundation to begin with where you can
openly communicate and express needs, including when you're displeased with
the other or when you have a need right for
more help or more collaboration or more partnership, whatever it is,
then it's going to be harder.
Right.
And part of this, I think is is also there's
a lot of gender stereotypes you know that are like
alive and well, right, Like, women are kind of typically
raised and reared to.
Kind of be the ones to even though modern day
we've come a long.
Way, you know, to kind of be like at the
forefront of being the children's like caretaker and making all
the appointments and signing them up for the after school stuff, right,
And and and fathers were typically raised by fathers who,
you know, we're taught that being a good dad is
providing discipline and structure, and it's like, if you're not
listening to me, then you're being oppositional, and so we
need to.
Punish, right.
And it's just it's a learning process, it really is.
It is. Yeah, now you say that you do a
lot of therapy and communication with other parents. Have you
got a foundation you set up or what do you
have far as a business that helps others?
Yeah? Yeah, so so I have a psychotherapy practice where
I see you know, therapy clients. But then I also
this work specifically, the work that I do tends to
be a high focus with the mothers for the very
reasons I was just saying, because they don't typically ask
for what they need, right, So it also doesn't give
the fathers or their partners the opportunity to rise to
the occasion. If you're not communicating and asking for what
you need, how can your partner you know, help? So
part of this is building confidence. So to answer your question,
my coaching business is Jana Fuchs Coaching and working with
mothers who are busy and or overwhelmed when raising a
child with autism and or ADHD.
Okay, how do they get in contact with you?
Yeah? So they can just go right to www.
Dot Jana Fuchscoaching dot com and Jana is ja, Na.
Fuchs is FS and Frank you see HSS andc.
Okay, with everything that you've done, with what you've done personally,
can you say that you've worked with someone that maybe
when they first came in, you looked at it and
you said, this will never work, this is a disaster.
Then all of a sudden it became a success story.
Yeah, I mean one person.
It's just this is the top of mind because I'm
working with her right now, and I was just speaking
with someone else about and about her success.
So her son is level.
Three autism, right, so kind of more you know, kind
of prominent symptoms and or features. Her concern was, especially
now as he's going into his teen years, that there
was this sense of kind of panic that she hasn't
done enough to set him up for success with becoming
as independent as he is possibly able to become. So
things like you know, maybe you and I take for
granted like being able to brush our teeth right unassisted.
For her, you know, he's almost thirteen years old, and
for her kind of like ounting.
She's always had to stand there.
And count the number of seconds so that he knew
to keep rushing the whole time. And she had been
meaning now for like two or three years to just
try to get him to brush his teeth on his own,
but just felt duck with like how to do it,
and when there's the time crunch of having to get
the kids to school by a certain time, and she
just kind of got herself in this habit of it's
just easier if I.
Just stand there and do it. That's how he's used
to doing it, right, But it's.
Not helping towards that long term goal and it's not
building confidence in him that he can do it on
his own. So we decided, how about getting a timer,
and we kind of scaffold so that he knows you're
right there right you can stand right next to him,
or you could stand even just behind him, and he
has the timer with the same number of seconds, and
he can he can watch it.
He can hear when it goes off.
And don't you know that has been going so swimmingly
well and the confidence right, And so now the next
thing is getting him to sit at the table to
eat a meal with the family instead of right on
his own in a separate room where she also has
to sometimes kind of just sit with him.
One on one or even like help him speede himself.
So that's kind of the next thing in work, and
we're scaffolding kind of building that. But I want to
be clear who I am not is I am not
a parent child coach. So these are ideas that really
kind of came from her where we brainstorm together how
she wants to hold herself accountable and the goals that
she has for herself as a mother.
That's really the work that I do.
Okay, there's one thing that you just brought up. I
think you are the perfect person for this. Most people,
even a lot of people that I talk with now,
they don't get into to the levels. They just simply
say low functioning or high functioning because that's what they use. Now,
can you explain to everybody that's listening the levels and
what they mean.
Yeah, the levels really just speak to the level of
support okay, right, that a person might need. You know,
my son, for example, he needs a little bit of support.
Of course, it's all relative. What does a little bit
of support mean?
Right? Well, my son, like to use the example I
just gave, my son can brush his teeth, right, He
zones out a lot and read it, but he absolutely
can do it.
He can take a shower.
He needs like a couple prompts, a couple little reminders,
but mostly you know, there are even some nights he
just does it on his own and it just you know,
he might take an extra ten minutes longer than we do.
But okay, right, and so that's like he's level one.
But then as you work towards level two, level three, right,
it just means that it requires a higher level of support.
If we take level three for example, you might have a.
Child who isn't verbal or able to communicate. Well, you know,
sometimes they can communicate with a device, and that's super helpful.
But the levels really just speak to the level of support.
Yeah, because I noticed the one common thread is that
very few people use the levels.
Yeah.
Right, And this is just another example to your point,
like things change all the time, right if and so
this current day kind of verbiage that we use, it's
just a way that it feels more respectful and saying
higher functioning lower functioning. And a lot of people have
the misconception, like alongside of that that just because someone
is nonverbal must mean that they're not intelligent, and that's
just not true. This is why also people who are
nonverbal can get frustrated even more because they have a
rich emotional life.
They have things they need to say and get out.
But imagine how you would feel if you were misunderstood
or if you couldn't get it.
Out absolutely, and that's why it's called the spectrum. I've
had the beauty over the last year of meeting so
many different people at so many different levels, and they're
all succeeding in their own ways. I've got one that
is a great artist. I've got others that just do
great things.
Yeah.
So it just shows that if you get someone out there,
you find out what they need, what they don't need,
people that can help them, and then just keep working
that way. And what that allows is it allows the
person to get out there, build their business or build
what they want to do, and show that they can
really function in society and do exactly what they want
to do in life.
One hundred percent. One hundred percent. And you think about
all of.
The talents, right, Like, the ways that people can compensate
to express themselves in ways.
That you know as a like, as a neurotypical.
I mean, I'm actually neurodivergent, but I would say somewhere
in between the two.
I have ADHD.
But Okay.
The ways that people come up with to compensate and
express themselves are unbelievable. I mean, the things that my
son can do I could never do in a thousand years, right,
I mean he can, like thanks to his autism and
also like his ability to like hyper focus, he can
sit and do a lego set. Okay, that's over ten
thousand pieces. He's eleven. This is for ages.
Eighteen and up.
Unassisted. He just worked on it for like three months.
It's like seven feet long on our counter down here
in the basement. I mean, I just I would never
have the patience for that, right.
A lot of the people that I speak with, they
say that their autistic child is very focused, very literal,
very very responsible in what they do. And because of that,
it led to another conversation with another person that he says,
you can walk into any pharmaceutical lab, throw a pebble
and hit someone and they're probably autistic.
I believe it. I believe it, you know.
And when you think about the jobs that are held
by a large number of autistic people, right, it's physicians, countants, researchers, right,
like some of the best brains on the planet, musicians, comedians, actors.
Yes, so you're standing in front of one hundred people
right now. Some are aware of what autism is. Some
are not aware of what autism is. What would you
be telling them?
Oh, such a good question. It is a neuro processing difference.
It is a brain difference, and sometimes it is obvious
to the eye the heat, right, and to anyone kind
of looking if you know what kind of like typical
symptoms to look for, and sometimes you will have.
No idea, So don't make assumptions.
It can present that someone isn't necessarily interested in what
you have to say, but they're only interested in talking
about their own interest, right. But you might be just
talking to someone who's autistic. It's not that they don't
care about you. It's just that they tend to kind
of focus on the things that interest.
Them, right, Yeah. And then just you know they're they're
they can be more sensitive to sensory experiences, right, I
would say that that kind of like sums it up.
Yeah, right, right, Well, is there anything that we've missed
that you would kind of like to tell people that
might help them?
Yeah, I will say when I really when I hear
myself talking about this, as we were trying to navigate
the diagnosis of autism and we had all these question marks,
it was an anxiety provoking time because you know, we
had to wait six months to get into the testing psychologist,
and then you have to wait like another six weeks
to get the results back.
You were just waiting and waiting and not knowing what.
The answer is going to look like, and not knowing
then how to set up supports until you have the answers,
And so that was a really anxiety provoking time. And
what I want to tell people who are in that
situation is this is not like your forever, this.
Level of what are we going to do? The not
knowing right. Once you have the information, then you can.
Begin to kind of get back to some sense of
living again and whatever way that looks like for your family,
and you know, normalcy kind of like will kick in again.
Your child or the person who you love who is
maybe autistic, Nothing about them has changed just because they
get this label, Like they're still the same person, right,
and you still care about them and you still love
like none of that has changed.
The only thing that's changed is the information.
And now what you can do is use that information
to guide you to best support that person, and even
more importantly, so that person can advocate for themselves.
Right, that's great. Yeah, that's that's uh, that's well said information.
Yeah, thank you.
I really appreciate you coming on. I think this has
been a great conversation.
Oh my pleasure.
You're such a great host, You ask such great questions.
And the last thing that I'll say is, you know
the power of like minded community can make or break.
How you feel in this entire experience as you're navigating,
you know, in the beginning, like some of the unknowns,
which is.
Why I do the work that I do as a coach.
I really kind of focus on my group coaching because
bringing moms together who are maybe at different points in
their journeys, but who really kind of understand, like you're
someone who gets it.
Well, I try.
The power of a supportive community is everything. So again,
if people are looking for that are feeling like alone
in their journey, feel free to reach out again. It's
www dot Jennifs coaching dot com and it's a free
discovery call to see if it would be a good fit.
That's awesome. Again, I really appreciate you coming on. It's
been a great conversation.
Thanks again, from my heart to yours.
You're amazing and it's been such a pleasure to talk
to you.
I think it's so cool, your whole story so cool.
Thanks so much for your kind words. I really appreciate it.
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they can give us their information so one day they
may be a guest on our show. One more thing
we ask tell everyone everywhere about why not me? The world,
the conversations we're having, and the inspiration our guests give
to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world.