Autism advocate Jan Stewart reviews The SJ Childs Show podcast
Sara Bradford, host of The SJ Childs Show podcast, is a serialpreneur. She has worked in real estate, as a paralegal and as a massage therapist. She never imagined that her savvy business skills would turn their focus to neurodiversity, but with two autistic children with additional co-occurring conditions, it has become her passion.
Sara and her husband have two children, DJ and Anna.
DJ, now 14, was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Delay (now classified as autism under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders). He has additionally been diagnosed with ADHD and global developmental delay. He is intellectually gifted and has particularly strong auditory memory skills.
At nine months, he not only started walking but constantly spitting and flapping. He couldn’t maintain eye contact. He started reading at ten months and became adept at communicating in writing through Picture Exchange Communication System-type boards.
DJ benefited from early intervention and preschool, and family counselling helped Sara “enter his world”. He started speaking at four years after she initially removed dairy and then glucose from his diet. Years of breathing exercises helped his emotional regulation. She home-schooled him after the local public school said they couldn’t handle his needs, and by age 12, he had completed the entire high school curriculum. For the past five years, he has hosted his own YouTube channel, with over 5,000 subscribers, focusing on his special interest in languages. He has studied 244 languages!
Sara is hoping he’ll attend post-secondary school or vocational rehabilitation, although his sensory sensitivities and challenges with reciprocal communication and social interaction make it challenging.
Anna, now 12, was diagnosed with dyslexia at age 8, as well as with autism and ADHD. She is also gifted. Her early childhood was “seamless and easy”, although she talked in riddles, for example saying “It’s warm outside” when it was cold out. Sara has also home-schooled Anna, whose brightness makes it difficult—particularly at her awkward age—to make and keep friends. Sara is most concerned about her social and emotional well-being.
Three years ago, Sara was herself diagnosed with autism, ADHD, anxiety and depression. Her husband was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and has recently added autism to his diagnoses as well.
When DJ was in pre-school, his principal asked Sara to become a special needs parent liaison, starting her on her advocacy journey.
Shortly thereafter, she decided to write a children’s book about physical differences. This was driven by her family’s hereditary outer ear microtia (small, improperly formed ears), which led to bullying throughout her youth. She used the pen name SJ Childs as a combination of her first and middle names and as a play on words to focus on the children’s genre. To date, she has published seven books on everything from autism and dyslexia to Down’s Syndrome, physical differences and anxiety, and Anna has illustrated her recent book on ADHD. Another ten books are in the works.
The books led Sara to be invited as a guest on a number of podcasts, followed by the creation of her own podcast, The SJ Childs Show, in 2021.
Initially, Sara was unsure about the direction she wanted to take with the podcast. Through interviews with autism and neurodiversity experts and self-advocates like Temple Grandin and Kerry Magro, she decided to focus on education and parenting. Episodes air weekly, with over 315 to date, and cover a wide range of topics on neurodiversity and inclusion, featuring interviews with experts. Two episodes I found particularly interesting were on transition support for autistic adults and on raising neurodiverse children in the digital era. Sara aims to “challenge your beliefs and enhance your skills as a parent, educator and global citizen.”
The podcast is ranked in the top 10% of podcasts globally.
Sara has expanded into community advocacy, training local police officers, presenting at the Utah After-School Programs on inclusion and developing online courses for her new website @sjchilds.org.
In addition, she has formed an Autism Advocate Support Group on Facebook. The impetus for this group came after the shooting of a 13-year-old autistic boy whose mother unwittingly escalated the situation. The group has helped parents and caregivers learn how to effectively communicate with first responders and police and has broadened to encompass a wide range of topics. The group has grown to 1,700 members.
In 2022, Sara decided to further advance her advocacy and created an annual autism summit for parents and caregivers, healthcare providers, autism advocates, police, teachers, occupational therapists and other interested parties. Last year, I had the honour of speaking at her 1 in 36 Mix II Summit. This year, the SJ Childs Global Autism Summit will be held virtually from April 10th through the 13th. You can register through her website.
And that’s not all! Sara recently started the non-profit SJ Childs Network, which will become a neurodiversity resource centre.
Sara advises us to remember that all behaviour is communication. She strongly believes in curiosity, rather than judgment and expectations: the more curious we are about autism and neurodiversity and the more we discuss it, the more our children can thrive.
As she says, “The key is to understand, support and believe in your child.”
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Jan Stewart is a highly regarded mental health and neurodiversity advocate. Her brutally honest memoir Hold on Tight: A Parent’s Journey Raising Children with Mental Illness describes her emotional roller coaster story parenting two children with multiple mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders. Her mission is to inspire and empower parents to persevere through the most difficult of times and have hope, as well as to better educate their families, friends, health care professionals, educators and employers. Jan chairs the Board of Directors at Kerry’s Place Autism Services, Canada’s largest autism services provider, and was previously Vice Chair at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She spent most of her career as a senior Partner with the global executive search firm Egon Zehnder. Jan is a Diamond Life Master in bridge and enjoys fitness, genealogy and dance.