Beth Tignor: Navigating the Journey: Raising a Child with Autism and Celebrating Their Unique Talents

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast hosted by
Tony Mantor, Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
make you laugh, some will make you cry. Real life
people who will inspire and show that you are not
alone in this world. Hopefully you'll gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi.
I'm Tony Mattur and welcome to Why Not Me the World.
It is said that one in seven people worldwide either
know someone or have someone that is autistic in their family.
Joining us today to tell us how this statement fits
her is Beth Tignore. Thanks for coming on, Beth. How
you doing today?
I'm doing well. How about yourself?
Doing great here? Thanks for coming on on our show today.
Oh my pleasure.
I think you told me that you have a son, Anthony.
Is that correct?
Anthony is my son. He's fourteen years old, just the
other day turned fourteen. So it seems like times flying by,
and it's my experience with raising the child and I'm
going through the diagnosing the well. I would say even
maybe the signs and symptoms that we saw early on,
or that I saw early on, but and new as
someone who's been in around the population before, I knew
these these signs and saw what was happening. But I
had to come to terms with it myself as a parent,
because I think that is the one thing that although,
like you, I saw all the scientific information I could
possibly want on the topic, quite frankly, probably more than
I ever needed to know.
Yeah, having knowledge of the scientific information can only help
us so far, because when it actually starts affecting our lives,
and in this case, your life, it can be very dramatic.
So between the scientific information that you knew and what
the doctors were giving you, did you get enough information
that helped you.
What it didn't tell me was how to deal with
the reality of I have a one and a half
or a two year old who is not meeting a milestones,
and I now have to come to terms with the
idea that there might be something wrong and seek help
for him, which I think is a barrier for some
parents to begin with. I think that there is an
emotional response that goes along with this, that we may
you know that you, as a parent, you need to
be ready to hear. I distinctly remember conversations with the doc,
with the folks that were the meetings to sit down
after all the testing was done with the professionals, and
when they said that they were going to diagnose some
on the office and spectrum, there were some in my
group that were very dismissive that we're very oh, this
is not right. It's just he's a child. You're not
taking it, you're taking things out of context, and blah
blah blah. And I finally at some point had to
say to them, listen again. Fifteen years ago, I said, listen,
we have to realize that autism is not just Dustin
Hoffman and Rainman.
Okay, we can't look for these.
It can't be something that you have set in your
mind that is the condition.
Because we just don't have the time for Anthony's.
We don't have any more time to waste getting him
the help that he needed early on.
So what was some of the symptoms that you saw
that he was displaying that made you realize that you
needed to do something to get some help for him.
He was completely nonverbal, and so that was probably one
of our first symbol signs that something was off. At
nearly two years old, he had an uttered word.
So we're talking about twelve years ago when autism wasn't
easily diagnosed as it is today because the doctors just
didn't know as much back then about it. So what
was your first move and how did you approach it?
From that standpoint, it was.
Well, i'll tell you here's something that's helpful. May not
have been known, maybe more known today than it was
when I was looking for help for or an understanding
of what was happening. Was we did look to the
doctors first, but unfortunately there's a limited number of child neurologists,
which is who would normally diagnose child that age. What
I didn't know, but I found out from a close
family friend, was that I could also approach the school system.
Wow, that's a great thought. I don't think I would
have ever thought of the school system first. So when
you did approach them, what was the response and how
do they help you in what you was going through
at the time.
So my local school system is actually at the time
we were living in Norfolk, Virginia, I contacted the local
superintendent's office and said, I think that my child is
having some developmental milestone issues and I'd like an assessment
and they put together the team because the Americans with
Disabilities Act forces the schools to be on the front
line of that, and so while it would have taken
me months to get him into a neurologist, they were
able to see us relatively soon. Within two weeks, we
were in the school and all of the same, all
of the same testing that needed to be done was done.
It was just coordinated through the school, through the school
district rather than through a doctor's office and one singular visit.
They at that point took him and had him evaluated
by occupational therapists, speech therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists. They just they
basically did whatever testing they needed to do during the
time frame and.
Developed what what would.
Ultimately be his first IEP, which is an educational individualized
educational programming. And you'll hear that a lot as you
talk to parents. That is the schools, that is the
school's UH program that they lay out for advancement for
your for your child, and how the goals they want
to work on based on those individual child's needs and
what they come to the table with.
So with all this that's going on, you're having to
handle this as a parent and It's not the easiest
thing to go through because you have to be concerned
about your son and all the things the doctors are saying.
So how did you handle that?
I would say that diagnosing him as a as a
parent meant I'm going to say something that maybe a
little bit unusual, but it was it was hard to
accept that maybe my child was was different, and it
was hard to accept that maybe I had You know,
as a baby, you are only you're solely responsible for
everything with them, and so you can't but help. You
can't help but to take some personal responsibility. Did something
I do during pregnancy happen?
You know?
How did all of this happen? We're searching for that answer.
And it was only when I gave up on searching
for that answer for myself then I said, it doesn't matter.
It's all gone.
There's not you know, there's scientists out there in the
world that are trying to figure out what makes this happen.
What I need to focus in on is Anthony and
making sure that Anthony gets the best possible help as
early as possible. And that was so it was once
I could get that get past that point of selfishness,
almost in wanting my own answers, that I could redirect
myself and focus on the fact that I was running
not running out of time. But I do feel a
little like it's always running against the clock of getting
him the best possible help at the right event developmental time,
and being able to support him in that.
So once you got through all that, and how old?
How long did it take you to get through that?
Was that like a year? Six months?
You know?
How long did it take you to fully fully you know,
grasp that, Okay, this isn't my fault. I've got to
take and and now plan for my son's future. How
long did it take you to get through those emotions?
I would say it was a good six months to
a year before I could before I could get to
that mental state of mind. And now I'll just remind
you that pops up every once in a while, still
pops up and I'll see something and you know, there'll
be an article of oh, there's this connection with autism,
and I read the article and it's perhaps, you know,
taking some sort of medication during pregnancy that we all
thought was okay at the time to take, but maybe
it has some effects. Those moments of seeing those types
of things as a parent still makes me kind of
reflect in and say, you know, I hope that I
didn't do this or did something that I couldn't have helped.
But at the same time, now I will tell you,
as he's fourteen years old, he is such a unique person,
and I've learned to appreciate all of his uniqueness that
it's I don't we don't see him as that different anymore.
He's just as unique as a person as any individual
will be.
So he's fourteen years old and I was speaking with
a friend of mine and he's autistic, very highly functional,
and he told me something that really resonated with me,
and that was during his formative years, he got bullied
a little bit and he said that he felt really alone. Now,
has your son ever had anything like that happen?
I would have to say he's blessed to have not
a big but I think maybe in school, but not
that I'm aware of. And I will say that because
kids tend to be kids, and it doesn't matter where
they are.
Seven and eight year olds like to pick on each other.
I'm a little more old school when it comes to
the bullying thing, and that I see that's a little
bit more of a natural.
I'll tell you here's a story I got about that.
And it might have been that my son was being
the quote unquote bully, but he was ten. He was
he was ten years old, and his teacher called me
and said, Anthony's having a hard time respecting the boundaries
of one of the other students that he's normally really
really engaging with and really likes to parallel play with.
And I said, well, what do you mean.
She said, well, he knows that answered that the other
student gets upset when somebody colaps really loud next to him,
so Anthony will go up to him and kind of
giggle a little bit and clap next to him and
then giggle. And I said, well, what do normal ten
year olds do when they want to annoy each other?
And normal being the operative word there, what do other
ten year olds do? They go and they annoy each other.
So in my eyes, he was not bullying a child
by any means. He was playing with him as he's
played with other neurotypical children. Because we did have the
blessing of having I have a big family, so there
was lots of kids around for him to play with.
In his own way and get used to being around
a lot of children. That is not the case for
a lot of children on the spectrum. A lot of times,
through self preservation or for whatever reason, they're isolated.
And we just we didn't.
I was adamant that he was going to be part
of everything as much as he wanted to be. And
so when he would go to my sisters house, he
would go out to the neighborhood, and she lived in
an apartment's complex that would always have children, other children
from the complex at the playyard, and the children, ironically,
where they are so easy to accept, they would ask
questions like when you speak to Anthony, sometimes he doesn't
answer you directly. He'll answer you with a phrase that
he's learned from somewhere, because frankly, that's how he taught
himself how to talk.
By listening to other phrases.
And he's echolalic, where he'll repeat things that he's heard
in the same tenor and tone, which is hilarious sometimes,
but but I said, you know, that's how he engages
with the with the kids at the apartment complex, they
tease each other, that's what kids do. And so see,
once we got into that part of the conversation. The
teacher fully agreed with the fact that it was never
done in a malicious manner. It was, but it was
unfortunately we had to tell Anthony that it was. We
had to get him to understand that that particular type
of joking or playing was actually hurtful, and once he
understood it was hurtful, he stopped completely. He's got such
a kind soul. He would never intentionally hurt somebody. If
he thinks he has, He's very apologetic. But I would
say that a lot of it in these formative years,
which goes along with what you're uh with with your
other friend had said, was making their environment as natural
as possible, as organic as possible, because that's the world
they're going to live in when they grow up, and
they need to be just as comfortable with the world
as the world with them. I would say the acceptance part.
You know, when they're out in public. I have seen
folks like in the grocery store that will you know,
they'll they'll look at us a little bit differently. But
he's so outgoing that if they were to say something
to him, he would engage and and that would be
But happily, and so this is not the case for
some parents, and I understand that, but this is his,
his situation, and then we're grateful for.
The one thing that you brought up was you've got
a large family. So I was talking with one couple
and they had I think it was two or three children,
and one of them was autistic, and they had to
explain to all to the to their other kids, you know,
why their brother was different than they they are. Did
you run into some of those same issues with with
all all your family having to explain and or did
they kind of just accept it and just just go
with the flow as some do.
I would say my nieces and nephews were very easy
to go with the flow on things. I do also
have a daughter who is six years older than Anthony.
She just turned twenty, and I would say she had
to it was harder for her and as well. So
there's four of us in our family. Was like I said,
lots of nieces and nephews. But I would say she
have a lot to deal with herself. And we had
to pay attention to the fact that we as parents
and and as family members are so surrounding Anthony and
trying to support him that she almost was being left.
Out a little bit.
That's understandable.
So that's that.
Is something that other parents need to be aware of,
and other couples need to be aware.
There is a high divorce rate in the community of
caregivers because we naturally focus on the on the weakest
in our in our groups as humans.
Yeah, and that's perfectly normal.
But we need to remember that there is still other
people in our lives that need our attention. And so
that is something to keep to be mindful of.
Yeah, and and and I mean, I I fully you know,
that's the first time I've heard that, you know, kind
of like that. So so that's really good for other
people to hear because because they may be going through
similar situations and not knowing how to handle it, you know.
And and they're looking at their their son or daughter
that needs the help, needs more help than the other one,
and they're thinking that their other other child should be
supportive of that, but they're not really fully grasping that
everybody needs, you know, as much equal attention as they
can because they're their kids.
Yes, and if you don't, I mean, it's like I said,
it's it's an inevitable that extra attention will be given.
Be cognizant of it.
If you're aware of it from the beginning, and you're
you can approach the topic as opposed to saying you
know you should just be supportive, approach it together and
say I understand that a lot of my time is
going to be focused on this, and I want you
on board, but I'll also be conscious to make time
for just you as well as children, because you know children,
we don't want as parents, we never want our children
to think that we have a favorite.
Right.
Inevitably, if you're if you're a parent raising a child
on the spectrum that you are, you are having to
give more of your time and effort to one child
than the other.
So SO does so he's just turned fourteen. Does he
have anything that stands out to you that he might
wind up doing or might consume a lot of his time.
Well, I will tell you he is going to end
up doing something along the lines of probably your trade.
Okay.
And I tell you this because he about two years ago,
I was working on a project. He's always always been
attached to his tablet, to his iPad for many years now,
and I have worked with the schools to try and
get them to understand that. He early on learned to
use this device to teach himself and that's the best
way he learns.
He would learn.
He would go and look up items by speaking pressing.
He'd learned that if you press the microphone button, he
could tell it something. But he also learned that if
he couldn't understand something he was reading, that if he
highlighted it, Siri would read it to him. And so
this has been his connection to doing things.
That's great. I love hearing things like that because this
just shows people that are listening that you know anything's
possible and just not to give up, to keep on
moving towards what you'd like to do. Well.
So this story that I'll tell you, it makes me
think that he'll end up somewhere in your businesses. I
had been working on a project and you know with
all companies, they give you an email address. When I
stopped working with the company, I hadn't realized that Google
was still logged into my email address. And the old
company they contact me about seven months and after the
contract is over and they said, hey, listen, we're getting
ready to take everything down. Please go on and get
anything mean you might need from the platform, you know.
Look, I thank you.
And then one of the tech support persons calls me
about an hour later and says, I don't know how
to give you the information from your YouTube channel, but
I feel like there's so many thousands of views on
here that I can't just disable it.
What do you want to do? And I said, I
don't have a YouTube channel. I don't know where you're
talking about.
Well, comes to find out Anthony had made himself a
YouTube channel through that email address and had been posting
videos of Now for him, the videos are are things
other things he sees on YouTube that are the cartoon characters,
a lot of credits, the curriculum boards for a lot
of the children's shows. He would record those and repost them.
And I had no idea.
He literally had on one on one video and I
have no idea why.
But he had forty three thousand. Yes, that's a lot
of that's a lot of It's for.
A kid, it sure is.
So.
So after we found it down, I went and took
his tablet away from it. I took his tablet and
was looking through some of the things that he has
sought himself to use two different editing programs, software editing
or video editing programs with the recorded now. And then
there's another one that's ki n etc. I think is
what it's called it. It's a different type of editing.
So he downloads videos or records videos and edits them
all himself. And again, he taught himself how to do
all of this right under my nose, and I had
no idea. That's great, So so what I teld him.
I talked to his teaching staff, a sports staff as
we came time to do his redo.
His his educational goals.
And now he's going into high school and they're looking
to formulate what he'll do for a living and try
to prepare him for that.
And they had they had mentioned that he said he.
Wanted to be a farmer one day, which is kind
of an off item. And I was like, well, so
here he may not be actually giving you an accurate
description of what he can do. So let's be a
little more realistic and let's try to gear him towards
actually exploring how to make a living off of a
talent that he actually that he has taught himself and
that he apparently loves to do, so we're working towards
that as a goal for them.
That's awesome. So over the years, how have you seen
his changes develop? I mean, you've got a daughter that
you saw grow up and changes that happen that way.
But now you're dealing with Anthony's autism and the ten
or twelve years that you've had to deal with that
and understand it and grow and learn the changes. Have
you seen anything that you can tell our listeners that
you've used or that he can use that can develop
him for his future.
I think that the changes that come along with a
newer with children.
With children on the spectrum, as they're going through their
formative years, you almost have to act as a very
offhands guide for what I had to and to get
them to let them express what it is that's going
to be important to that. Like everyone else, we choose
our careers based on what we like, what.
We're good at, and what we enjoy.
At least as teenagers, we were all told that and
then we hopefully made that our reality. With the child
on the spectrum, there's so much inks to try to
get them into the right spot or back into the
right lane as we see it, that we forget that
they're the ones that are driving the car.
We're just trying to make.
Sure they don't run off the roads. Sure, and we
have to let them. We have to be willing to
let them try different things and let them be free
to express failures as much as joys. And what I've
seen in him is definitely his willingness to be more
open with people, to be more interactive as he's built
more confidence in himself. Because when he's doing that, when
he's doing the things that he likes, like if he's recording,
he likes the idea that it's how he's interacting with people,
and it's given him the confidence and says he's grown
to to just try different things. Some things didn't work out,
some things.
That's good because because so many, so many that I've
heard tend to, you know, if if things don't go right,
they kind of take and go into their shell, you know,
and and that's their their comfort zone. So it sounds
to me like like he's willing to go outside that
comfort zone a little bit to to learn things and grow.
Yea, he is.
Although I will say you, just as every parent, you
know when your child is getting to the point of frustration,
and just like every other child and every other person,
he has, he just hasn't always.
He's still learning to with three.
Uh, withhold some of the outbursts that would come naturally.
He does have he will have a triggering item that
will if he gets upset with something, he'll start repeating
a mantra for himself that is comfortable for him but
fits nothing into the context. Or he'll uh, he has
an a pointer stick that he likes to manipulate with
his hands, and and that'll give him a little bit
of this, you know, the text, the focus on something
to regain himself and to recontrol himself as he's in
a tantrum. Those are much less, much less common. But again,
what they call stemming for some of our children, there's
a lot of advice out there to break them of
that habit. I say, you teach them how to use
that in a in an appropriate way like his stemming
being flicking in the pen, because it because it is
actually their way of collecting themselves and calming down.
Okay, that makes sense exactly.
We all need to be able to do that, and
you're just teaching them what's an acceptable way to do that.
As they as they're out in the rare world and
around others.
The beauty of this is everyone is different in this world.
I mean, it's like, like, the one thing that I
that I tell people when I'm when I'm being interviewed
about about my podcast is that is that I'm hoping
to show the differences within people, you know, within the
autistic spectrum. But but they have to realize that that
just because they're different doesn't mean that that they're they're
not able to, you know, fit into society, because there
are different people in society that sometimes you scratch your
head and wonder how they got there, you know. But
but so the one thing that that I'm curious about
is I've heard so many people tell me that that
their autistic child has a focus that's unlike any other
that they've met, because because they can ask them a
given date on a given time, you know, even if
they weren't alive, they know what happened that date. Is
your son similar to that way? Or is that doesn't
doesn't interest him?
So his his talent, as I would say, or selective savantness,
which is actually something that they they've done studies on.
It used to be believed that the savant figures like
we saw in Ring Men, or there's actually a young
man out of DC who is blind and has been
on the spectrum. He's i want to say, maybe in
his thirties now, absolutely phenomenal classical pianist, but can't make
himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So those are
they call them selective savant skills. And that was kind
of what I was alluding to earlier when I was saying,
you have to let your child's inner talent come out.
You have to be willing to let that happen. I
would say Anthony with his talent is with things that
he has seen videos. If I asked him to take
me to any select scene in any video that he's
ever watched, he can get right there within a moment's notice. Well,
you pull up the video, he knows exactly on the
trayer will it is exactly where to go. And so
he does have that memorization ability, And that's what I
think it is. It's a little bit of a being
able to memorize very quickly. It's not that he sit,
it's not that he sees it and then he never forgets.
It's that he's able to memorize it quickly, and he's
okay with the repetitive action that would take for you
to memorize something.
Okay, So moving forward, I can just imagine that you're
pretty excited to see how he's going to develop and
how he's going to use his skills and how he'll
be able to use that to transition into the workforce
and society.
I am excited to see this.
I'm excited to see how he will interact as as
he's getting older, as how he'll interact more with his peers,
and how much he'll learn to develop relationships with his
peers versus just the support figures.
Okay, So he's fourteen years old and he's been developing
and he's learning, and you're learning, and you're interested to
see how he's going to work with his peers moving forward.
So I guess my question is, up until now, how
has he worked with his peers and how has that
camaraderie been.
I think that that is the one part that that
he still struggles with, as most do, is the socialization
aspect of it. They they can socialize with those, uh,
it's hard for them to initially for him to initiate socialization.
So he's not exactly sure how to play along, you know,
how to play along with somebody, or how to interact
with somebody on an age appropriate level. And that's where
that's where these next few years of high school are
going to be focused, and his puberty years or his
teenage years will be focused on turning to learn to
interact with his peers appropriately as he's going to be out.
Hopefully one day he'll be out on his own and
learning and interacting regularly without any support, and so gearing
him towards that is the end goal, and.
Then just filling in support where he needs it. Uh.
We are we are blessed to have a few organizations
here in Virginia that do minimal service oversight where where
the person is actually living in their own apartment uh
and basically functions as their own person, and they have
a staff's member that will stop by once, uh, you know,
once every several hours, maybe ten hours, make sure that
the person is safe, make sure that they have you know,
bought their groceries for the week, or that they've you know,
taken medications that need to be taken. It's somebody that
stops in and just kind of make sure that happens.
But they they are essentially living their own lives and
I and I look forward to that being his end
result that you know, there is no supportive service and
a daily care taker needed, uh, and that and and
and I will say one of the other things that
I'd like to make sure that your listeners know is
there is a lot of services out there available to
help them, but it's.
All very overwhelmed.
Please be prepared to be overwhelmed in the beginning because
there's so much now that you have to go through
that you have to you have to just look for
what niche fits, what you're looking to do, and where
your child is. There's other services out there that are
dependent you know, that will give you full dependent care.
Some of this is stuff that you're entitled to.
It takes a long time to get through the minutia
of working with state governments.
But Anthony's Anthony is allotted.
Thirty five hour week personal attendant, and states all see
that as an as an alternative to institutionalizing. So they
would much rather pay somebody to come to the house
and help me out for thirty hours a week than
worry about the possibility of needing to have him institutionalize.
That's a good thing that allows hopefully to take and
build towards the future rather than restrict, because when you
put someone in institution, I mean, I'm not saying anything
bad about all the institutions, but the thing is is
not knowing what they are, whereas you know what you
can do at home. If you have that help, then
hopefully that that help will will will develop into something
that can be a safe zone and they can build
from that and hopefully then transition so that so that
they can be productive and and and just to feel
good about their life.
Absolutely, there's there's a purpose for everyone in this world,
and we just, you know, even we just we're more
focused on it when we know that the child needs
a little extra help. And that's what this is all
People develop, you know, it's you don't get to be
twenty without having a life story behind you already.
Absolutely, it's our daily.
It's our daily actions and habits and surrounding that form
us as people, just as much in neurodivergent versus neurotypical society.
Sure, yeah, that's exactly it.
Everyone is unique, whether we in one way or another,
and it's just a matter of seeing how we all
can fit into society together.
Well, I really want to thank you for coming on
and sharing your story with us today. I think we
covered a lot of topics that hopefully will help a
lot of people that are listening to this And the
bottom line is that we are all in this together worldwide.
The more we understand, the more that we have an
opportunity of helping and making this a better world for
everybody to live in.
Thank you, Tony, I appreciate you letting me tell Anthony's story,
and good luck with the rest of the podcasts.
I'm sure you'll find lots of interesting stories.
Thanks so much, and it was truly a pleasure to
have you here. Thanks for taking the time out of
your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We
hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed
it bringing it to you. If you know anyone that
would like to tell us their story, send them to
tonymantor dot com contact then they can give us their
animation 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.
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