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Welcome to Embrace, a heartfelt podcast series led by Rachel Forbes, Executive Director of LDS - Learn. Develop. Succeed. Drawing on her rich experience in community building, social justice, and nonprofit leadership, Rachel takes you on an intimate journey through the life of Mason—a remarkable individual whose story of navigating dyslexia and ADHD offers powerful insights into the world of neurodivergence.
Through Mason’s story, from his early years in preschool to adulthood, we explore the first signs of learning differences, how they evolve over time, and the impact of a strong, supportive community. Alongside educators, neurodivergence experts, passionate parents, and allies, Embrace shatters stigmas, highlights the unique gifts of neurodivergent learners, and offers empowering strategies for building confidence and self-esteem.
Join us as we celebrate the power of educational and social-emotional supports that embrace each unique learner for who they are—and who they can become.
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Hi, I'm Rachel Forbes. I'm a passionate mother, an advocate, a partner, a friend, and an ally. I bring those identities and my experience in community building, social justice, and nonprofit leadership to my role as Executive Director at LDS, Learn, Develop, Succeed. Over the next few weeks, I will lead you through the story of a beautiful soul named Mason from preschool through to adulthood.
We get to witness Mason's early years, exploring the first signs of potential learning differences like dyslexia and brain-based differences like ADHD. In this series, we will feature educators from LDS, experts on neurodivergence, as well as passionate parents and allies who make up the community that rallied around Mason. Along the way, we'll reveal the gifts that unique learners offer.
shatter some stigmas about neurodivergence, explore ways to build confidence and self-esteem, and offer a path forward. A path paved by educational and social emotional supports that embrace each unique learner for just who they are and for who they can choose to be. This is Embrace.
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Over the previous episodes, we've walked with Mason across the years and reflected on how to embrace and support him every step of the way. But a common theme stuck out, the need for more systems that are neuroaffirming and inclusive of those with learning differences. Every step of the way, we talked about the need for change within the system as it currently exists and how it can be made better through adjustments and modifications. Mason was one of the lucky ones to get an early assessment.
clinical diagnosis, but what if you're well into your 30s? Someone like Liam Borsa, who is currently discovering more about his own neurodivergence while in the midst of transitioning from his old career through higher education experiences and into a brand new career path. I think it's only been the last couple of years that I've started to look at that with any intent. Previously, there was a lot of frustration and a lot of something wrong with me.
through most of my, like if I rewind all the way back to early education of elementary school and high school, there were a lot of things that I thought were wrong with me. And I think I struggled most of the rest of my life just kind of unlearning all of that. And in the process of unlearning all of that, I was able to look at things a little bit more objectively and not be as hard on myself as I was.
And that offered up a lot more room to be able to touch on these things. And what I've learned the last little while is what habits don't work for me, what habits do work for me. And it's just trying to find a way to kind of navigate through those things. And it's been difficult to understand because everything's been so constantly changing. Everything's been in transition the last four years. So it's still a work in progress.
Liam was diagnosed with ADHD in his early 30s and has suspected dyslexia as well. We asked him to reflect on what learning was like when he was a young child. My parents and my school, for one, was a very small community in rural DC. All the signs were there. I just don't think anybody knew what to do with me. So I was kind of always suppressed, I guess, in a lot of ways, a lot of creative ways.
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And I wish I had somebody at that time to advocate for me. I was actually at a wedding last year and a few of the people there, well, I mean, the bride was, she's a school counselor and a couple of her friends who she had invited to the wedding kind of do a role that you do and they'll just sit in on a classroom and watch the body language of certain students and pull them aside if they notice something and kind of assess where they're at. And I was like, why was this not a thing for me?
I think it's also the damage done to a young mind at that time, thinking they're stupid, there's something wrong with you, the lack of confidence and limiting beliefs that grow over the course of your teen years, your younger years, your formative years, your teen years, and then your twenties, that all has to be undone before you can get to a place where you can now start. And that's a lot of wasted time. And if I never had that and just
somebody could just here take my hand. Who knows where I'd be. And getting diagnosed later in life isn't all that uncommon. Becky Bishop, the senior manager, Youth and Adult Programs, knows that this late diagnosis plays a huge part for many adult learners at LDS. There are three types of adults that I tend to see. So the first would be a late diagnosed adult.
an undiagnosed adult, and then a diagnosed adult, but they have no idea what their learning profile is. All of those things are very challenging because more likely than not, those individuals grew up with negative learning experiences. So they may have struggled throughout school, throughout high school. They might have tried to get into a post-secondary
program and they weren't able to complete it or they didn't feel like they were good enough to apply to a post-secondary institution and maybe they had people around them who said, you can't do that or you have so much potential, but that can be really hard to come back from. So it's really important for adults who
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either have a late diagnosis or suspected diagnosis to understand the neurobiology of how their brain works and that their self is not a result of their learning differences. So just because they have or might have a learning difference does not reduce their value and that they still have so much to give.
and that it definitely takes time and effort, but it is doable. It's doable to change your mindset and realize that your brain can do amazing things. Recognizing you're not necessarily a mental health professional, but I'm curious in your experience working with a lot of adult learners or teen learners, do you see an interplay between some mental health challenges and the journey that people might be on in?
discovering their neurodivergence and how their brain works. Like I said, a lot of times neurodivergent individuals have very negative learning experiences and that can absolutely cause trauma. It can cause them to have lower self-esteem and develop things like anxiety because they are worried that they are not going to meet the expectations that
their environment has on them. And it really requires a lot of resilience and it requires a lot of effort to be self-accepting. And when you don't feel that, it can definitely lead to mental health challenges. And I mean, when we're talking about things like executive functioning, that also relates very heavily to mental health concerns.
Let's talk about executive functioning and how does that show up in high relief, especially in transition points for teens when they're coming out of high school or their youth or adults are faced with new challenges. It's interesting because executive functioning is becoming more of a known topic in the present time. But I know when I was growing up, I had never heard
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the words executive functioning before. And I think a lot of people don't even know what that means. So when we talk about executive functioning, we're talking about the behaviors that we have and the mental functions that we have that allow us to do things like learn. So when you bring neurodivergence in the mix, you're more likely to have executive dysfunction, which can make it very difficult just to
start to do something. It can make it difficult to get through something because you might be struggling with cognitive flexibility. So you might be struggling to move from one thought to another, from one activity to another. You might be struggling with your working memory and being able to solve problems in an amount of time that is quote unquote acceptable. So first of all, being aware that
executive functioning is an important part of learning and living. It's also very useful to have an idea of what your executive functioning profile looks like and how you can work towards strengthening your executive functioning so that you are better equipped to solve problems and reach your goals and
generally feel better about yourself. What are some of the challenges that are arising most for them in navigating their own understanding of their neurodivergence? This might be a hot take, but I'm going to say that parents might be the biggest barrier. But I don't want to say that very specifically. I guess one of the first
big picture questions that we ask children is, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I think that when we get into our teenage years, the countdown starts. So you're gonna be growing up soon. You need to hurry up and decide what it is that you're gonna do and what you're gonna be. And we end up putting...
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unrealistic expectations on our children and teens about what it is that they're going to do once they graduate. And there's also, even with the best intentions, think sometimes parents are worried that their teens are going to fail. So they try their best to avoid that completely instead of letting it happen in small doses and creating a
an opportunity for the teen to become more resilient. And what I hear a lot of in adults is that, well, I'm now 30, 40, 50 years old and I just thought it was too late for me to do anything because I didn't achieve anything when I was a teenager or a young adult. And now I feel like I'm starting over and I've wasted so much time. So I really think it starts.
With a parent, it probably continues with throughout school and society, this idea that you have to be something as soon as you graduate high school and you have to hurry up and decide. And how do we start to build acceptance of that idea that things aren't all going to just, you know, come out in some sort of beautiful finished product all the time? Well, the word fail or failing or failure
has a very negative connotation, but it's actually the door to learning something new. So when you fail, you learn that that wasn't the best way to do the thing. So it is an opportunity to challenge your assumptions, to try something new, and to...
grow your skill set, to grow your self-image, to develop resilience. Failing is an opportunity. It's not the door closing. And are there any strategies that we can employ or try out when we're part of a teen's family or their web of support or their peers?
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to let them know that we're there for them if they're failing, they can take those risks and learn with us together so that it maybe doesn't seem as scary to take those chances. I would like to see this happen from the get-go when you're at a tiny tot. But if we've gotten to the teen years, there's still time where
The teen is under the care of another person. And not to say that there's a time limit on making mistakes, but it's a good opportunity to learn how to make mistakes and to learn that making mistakes is not the end of the world. And just because you do make a mistake, it doesn't define your future. Making a mistake is really just like a moment in time.
And there's so much time to be had. And I think letting families and teens know that LDS is a safe place for them to come and make mistakes and learn how to learn and learn how to grow from mistakes is really important. An important aside, we're talking about failing and making mistakes in safe spaces here. There are times when mistakes can have really high consequences and that are hard to come back from.
But with an emphasis on prevention and creating webs of support, we aim to avoid high consequence situations. Turning back to Liam, he also resonates with the idea of feeling mounting pressure to not make mistakes from an early age. So after high school, did you go right into like technician training? Was that the pathway or did you take some time? I ran away. I went traveling and I went off to Australia for year.
I was not pushed into trades. I just didn't know what to do with myself. Originally, what I wanted to do is I was really into video production. You I worked with doing a lot of videos and timing them to music. And I love just going through that whole process and filming. And I wanted to go into video, whatever that was, school. And I think the response, sorry, Mom and Dad, but your response was, what are you going to do, work for Hollywood or something? You got to do something practical.
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Well, YouTube became a thing and Instagram became a thing and miss that boat. So yeah, I ended up just going into trades and I'm glad I did. I think it was just why there was a bit of a, I was so all over the place ADHD that it's, it's a lot of money to fork out to a, maybe D maybe H maybe D. and
I just think that my parents were in a position where they're like, we're not going to invest in that. And we were also not from a family that could do that. it took me a, know, trades was an easy route and it took me until this age to finally go, know what, it's worth, you know, because of this trade background, I can make the money so that I can afford the education that I would have done back then. But now it has contacts, it has somewhere to land. So I'm glad I waited. I'm a little bit glad I waited.
Maybe not as long. then you have made a shift recently to go back to school. Tell me about that process. That process was probably took about maybe three years before I finally jumped into that. I'd hummed and hawed about it. And I think the biggest thing for me not going into it was fear of failing and then somebody important in my life at that time.
basically just said to me, what are you afraid of? And I said, well, I'm afraid that I'll do it and fail and end up, she's like exactly where you are right now. Okay. And so I applied and went into university. So I got accepted to industrial design program at Emily Carr. And I think that was the first time that this scary post-secondary education that I saw my sister go through in kinesiology and sciences and biology and then nursing and
you know, APA format, essay writing, and academia, and like, no, not me. And I think I had a 10 question bubble sheet exam the entire four years. Everything was project-based, everything was document, everything was in, you know, there was obviously essay writing and things like that. There's a lot of tools at our disposal now to be able to get the ideas forward, and they're more concerned with ideas and ways of knowing than...
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institutionalized memorization, brainwashing. So it was definitely the perfect environment for me to get into a post-secondary education. And from there, I've applied into a master's and been accepted. What happened with Liam demonstrates how our systems have been structured for the neurotypical simply because that's the majority of the population. But with up to 20 percent of the population being neurodivergent, it's time we start to design things to empower
see and embrace those minds from an early age. The energy and time that so many youth and adults are now spending unlearning fears and anxieties about learning, learning new things about themselves could have been invested proactively if we had more models of learner-centered support that embrace differences and built on strengths. Liam's a fantastic example of not giving up on those possibilities and knowing that any time of life is a great time to reinvest in yourself.
although he's still working on recognizing his successes. He was recently published in an international interior design magazine and he'll soon set off to Berlin to work on his master's in industrial design. Imagine the endless amounts of possibilities for kids like Mason and adults like Liam if they had the learning and social emotional supports they deserved right from the beginning. In the series finale of Embrace.
I talk about my learnings and findings across all of the interviews and episodes, things that will help build and foster a future where we put learning differences at the forefront of our educational system. Embrace is an everything podcasts production, an award winning team focused on engaging storytelling that connects with its audience in a meaningful and memorable way. show runner is Rithu Jagannath.
And our audio engineer and sound mixer is Scott Whitaker. And if you like the show, please rate and follow it. It helps us reach more listeners like you. Until next time, embrace your kids.
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Another Everything Podcasts production.
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