hi and welcome to navigate autism with jane lan i'm your host jane lynn britain and for those of you who are joining me for the first time i am excited that you decided to tune in because i am a mom of a sixteen year old autism and i have a lot of experience as you can imagine that i am so interested in sharing with you about ten years ago i quit my job in corporate to homeschool my son with autism and i learned so many amazing things i learned a lot about myself and him and i thought wouldn't it be wonderful to share a lot of the adventures and the learnings that we have gained so that hopefully it would help you in some way that's why i'm here and today i'm really excited to share with you something that really has changed my life and that is something that gave me more time peace of mind some freedom to do the things that i want to do as well as finding great people to be friends with my son and i didn't know how important that was for me and still i started bringing that into my life and you can probably imagine you're a parent or you're a caregiver of a child with autism and you're doing so many things you are taking your child to doctors and therapist to school to i u p d meetings you're also taking care of your siblings your other children who are siblings to your child you're taking care of the family you're working there's so much that you're doing and you're probably overwhelmed much like i was and stressed and tired and maybe even finding yourself saying no when a friend says let's go out for a cup of coffee and what happens is we start to give up a little bit of ourselves every day and then we start to get sick and tired and sometimes regretful when i started to make time for myself i felt so much better i was able to get healthier be calmer i saw my son respond more positive  to me more positively to me and i saw my whole life and my family changed but the best part was i started to build a network with people who i could trust to watch my child and you know that's not an easy thing to do when you have a child and you're looking for a babysitter for instance you want to find someone that is really knowledgeable loving and caring and that you can trust and that's hard enough but then you add onto it the layer of autism and you want to find someone who can respond correctly and carefully when your child does something that is unexpected like running across the street or possibly hitting or biting or screaming but you also want someone who isn't just a babysitter someone who inspires your child to learn to try new things to go on outings how do you do that it was exciting right and very very excited to introduce you to someone that i met four years ago and who has become a really good friend his name is nico ellos and he created a company called psychics support services now he is a new jersey and he services all of new jersey but if you're not in this state they tune because i'm going to ask nico his secret later for how he finds the most amazing and i mean perfect people to hang out with our children well i'm really excited to introduce i have had the pleasure of working with many of nikko's psychics because for me i find it's really important to introduce my son to as many different people as possible so that he learns different ideas different ways of doing things and that he has more friends and as i have met each one i really have been amazed at how they connected instantly with william at how they brought different ideas always had a game in mind and how william has grown over the last four years just by knowing them and interacting with them but there's another thing i wanted to share with you it's really the peace of mind factor i want to ever forget i had a conflict one day and i really wanted to spend time with my daughter at her school but william had a baseball game he plays baseball for special needs and he loves that and i wanted to be in both places but i couldn't and so i asked nico and i have a sidekick and take william to the game and he said of course so we arranged it where someone came we knew him picked william up drove him to the game played with him helped him as his body and drove him home and the whole time that was happening i had peace of mind i knew william was in good hands and he would have fun and if anything happened a psychic could handle it so that when i was with my daughter we had a fabulous time and everything has flowed perfectly there was no one else that i could have called i don't have family in the area and i was able to have both of my children to take care of their activities and have fun while i had fun and peace of mind and so for all of these reasons i really wanted to share our viewers just what is fired you to create psychic support services and why you chose the name psychics yeah sure so you know what inspired me really was when my mom was my mom's a  paraprofessional you know school and she she works with individuals with autism and you know one day she said to me both parents can attend the parent teacher conference and how difficult it was and then how parents can't go out for a night or do things on the wrong because you know caring for an individual with autism you know is it takes someone with a certain skill set you know patience understanding you know knowledge empathy you know willingness to you know make a difference and those types of individuals you know are tough to find so in the back of my mind i kind of was like well wait you know what if there was something out there that connected families with people who you know were willing to make a difference people who were authentic and understanding so you know i was in school and i was thought about my cousins with autism growing up and you know how oftentimes they never had mentors companions people to look up to and and also you know i very much value relationships you know even like the little relationships that we have people we all need people that help you along the way and for individuals with disabilities and i believe it's tough for them to find you know outlets like that people look up to and it's tough for parents and so that's why i created psychics you know and i think a lot of individuals with disabilities you know are looked in a certain light to where you know they can achieve certain things or they can prove people wrong and they can't do certain things and you know i i think that's that's wrong and i i think they are super heroes for the things they overcome every day you know the battles they overcome and you know and they are super heroes and every super hero needs a sidekick you know so we're just trying to put our superheroes in the limelight and give them individuals who can help them grow and do fun things and at the same time like you said earlier give parents that peace of mind as that's so important in our lives for a lot of reasons so that's really what inspired me to give families psychics to create psychics and why you know every superhero needs a psychic i love that and it's so true and and i love it because of what it means to you what it means to me but because i know i know you live that it's not just words it is from your heart is your passion and it's what you do and i think that's why you find such great people which we're going to talk about a minute but would you explain we talk a little bit about how they provide support parents can go out but what are some of the specific services that you provide for the families sure so we provide mentorship companionship services where we have you know some of our staff who you know have our pursuing a degree mostly pursuing a degree in the field of special education social work humanities and these are just buddies you know who hang out with with individuals with disabilities  superheroes do all sorts of different things whether it's going on through community doing activities or really our program is flexible and keep in geared towards what the family and individuals are looking for we have a be a therapy services as well you know we have individual support services which is it's called i assist services which is a program run through medicaid in the jersey department of children and families and we also have our adult services you know community they support you know job coaching job  training career planning and you know those are services for individuals twenty one and over you know those are just the sort of the services that we provide in but it's all geared towards giving individuals the support outlet that they can depend upon trust and help them scope for boundaries with there within there but anybody who has come to work with us i've been able to train them they kind of say this is how we work with william and this is what motivates him and this is what doesn't work and they've always been so open and receptive to that which makes it easier to connect and be successful in our family so we really appreciate that about you and and just hearing all the things that you offer it really is an amazing service that is very diverse talk a little bit if you don't mind that this is your secret and i've i said earlier that every single person we've seen that has just been amazing and they're unique in their own way because of their individuality but we i think i've had at least fifteen psychics work with us probably more over the last four years how do you find these people and and yes in new jersey but we also have people outside of new jersey watching as well as from other countries so is there like a secret that anybody watching could use now yeah sure so i think the biggest things to me are reliability and patience and understanding so you know anyone that you're looking for i think those are three things that are important to keep an eye out for and you know with reliability you know if you're looking through you know job sites or put a job out ad or wherever it is you know when that person is tough to schedule or doesn't show up for you know that's kind of a red flag right off the bat you know  understanding you know one of the first things i ask people is why do you want to work with psychics why what do you want to get as some experience like this i look for people who really want to you know grow in this field gain more experience you know learn from our team learn from our superheroes so if i don't hear anything like that you know i kind of take an extra second to think about is this person a good fit and and you know patients to you know with patients it's you have to kind of see what they've done in the past you know when they entered when they are introduced to a new family are they understanding that it takes two or three four times to build a relationship and understanding and you know being able to work with a family like you said and you know so i think those are really three things that are important when looking for someone to be that psychic so to speak for your individual with with disabilities and you know so it's i don't think it's really a secret you know i i also think to you know one day i'll have kids and if this what i trust this person with with my kids one day very simply like that you know it's too so it's those are just really really three things that i look forward that's great i love all of stronger and that connection can be stronger and will really both be successful and just to touch on that real quick to jail and you know if it's something that you love it's something that you love doing something that you're passionate about no matter what you're going to excel you know if you work hard and keep going at it and i love the staff that we bring in because we did this today and we did that and i'm learning so much and you know i see them glowing and growing and you know and then they become teachers and now we're four years into it so some of the people we started the beginning are teachers and it's just it's just great to see but the biggest thing is just that passion and that energy and if you can it's kind of a kind of a gut feeling that you have to you know have but you know it's it's really important and that's great so those are some great qualities i think part of your secret is also where you find so could you talk a little bit about where you start to look for these people sure so really i started out at the schools the local universities you know that's a that's a good place to to really look for you know individuals there's other sites like  dot com you know there's agencies just like like mine out there who can help you you know find you know certain individuals too so that's definitely a good place place to start for sure do you post any ads anywhere like i know for a while i was posting on craigslist i actually found some great people to work with us on craigslist i was just curious if you use any of those sites yeah i don't i don't use any of those those sites really i've had you know been fortunate to find some great people from the schools you know from other sites like that too but you know really i just kind of stick with that well i think that is one of your one of your secrets is and after having talked to many of your psychics who were students studying to work in some way with special needs they really love having that experience that hands on experience in t take that back to the classroom bring what they've learned into the homes and it as you said they were really passionate about it and couldn't wait to describe it and they became teachers are able to spread it even further throughout the world so let me ask you one thing because one of our biggest fears as a parent is our children's behavior is so unpredictable they're wonderful they're loving they're kind but sometimes something irritates them and we don't always know what it is and they might behave in a way that we sometimes call aggressive and our biggest fear is who can handle that how do how you're psychics trained to handle those kind of behaviors well first you know that first meeting that we have with the family is very important you know we're not just going to send someone in line and say you know good luck to everybody it doesn't work like that you know we we get an idea of what a family is looking for you know are there behaviors if so you know what leads up to before it how do you sleep and ilet you know during it and what do we do after and you know how can we improve or work on these behaviors you know in or in the home around the community so we like to think of our parents as part of our team you know we our families know their individual best so you know our supervisors or take team whoever meet with the family get a good idea of what they're looking for and then you know we go back and work with our psychics and you know first will select a psychic who you know let's just say there's an individual or a superhero has had some behaviors in the past you know aggressive behaviors you know we look for people who had had that kind of experience in the past first you know and then you know we would make them well aware kind of you know give them you know information about that we gather from the family so that way they're prepared in you know working with the individual so that's a big part of training the individual making more personalized and you know so i would say really just having staff who have that have had that past experience getting some information ahead of time and you know that's important as well we also do have some trainings as well we do very basic a b a training you know positive behavior supports so they're very very well trained and competent and know so many wonderful things to do with our kids i mentioned that one of the biggest things for me was peace of mind and having time for myself what are some of the other comments  you get from parents this so for what this is really done for them yeah so a lot of it is is is that you know i have families who haven't gone out and like over ten years and now understand they have someone who they can to trust to go out and do that you know the growth in the individuals you know one sometimes you know we may help with an individual superhero putting them on a routine you know whether it's before school or after school or you know redirecting individual's towards other activities when you know a behavior is coming or something like that you know i think a lot of our families appreciate our willingness to be flexible and communicate and you know really work with families on the goal of you know whatever the superhero and the families looking for so those are things that families your feedback on some things i take great pride in to wonder if there's a lot of you do so much and and and all those things really are important to us and the relief we get in the health is being able to go out for the first ten years that was out for a while so i can really appreciate that and i know they're going to be families watching who would love to contact you what's the best way for them to find out if psychic support services is for them absolutely well i would welcome people to check out our website at psychics support dot com that's like explore all support dot  com there's a let's get started button right on there you know i invite you to take a look at our website i read all of our information and you know families think it's a good fit for them you know they can get click the let's get started button and you know we follow up right after that  send out one of our we'll give you a call good idea what you're looking for we'll send one of our supervisors or intake coordinators out to get a chance to meet you and your knees and you know then we would you know go to our psychics database and  find out who would be a good fit from our team and introduce you to the psychic and then you know we go from there and it's really our program is catered toward what family and individuals are looking for  so i definitely invite anybody to check out our website again that's psychic support dot com and one of the hours and days of the week so during the week we have normal regular business hours but we do provide our services mornings afternoons weekends we also do overnights you know during the day you know for individuals who you know are older individuals who are not necessarily in school so really we're trying to combine our families as much as possible is really no limits to what we can do in terms of hours so it's wonderful wonderful so i hope that many of you have learned a lot and hopefully you will check out nikos web site psychic support dot com and thank you for joining we're going to ask you to stay and i ask you to stay just for you are a minute because one of the things that i like to do is to share information on like this some some fun activities that you can do with your child right now and the one i chose for today is using your creativity and it may or may not work for your child depending on what level you feel they are but it's definitely something that i've done with some psychics and something that i do with people who work with my son and it's called pass the prophet i learned this from the sunrise program so nico and i are going to stand up oh ok we got three all right now that's good but hopefully we'll have time for all of them so i like to use things around the house because it is easier it's more practical you don't have to work about going and buying things and  can do it very quickly that way but as i said it's called pass the prop and what i like to do is inspire creativity and myself and others because it helps my child and so what this means is usually you have a bag of  things in it and let's say you're having maybe you can do it one on one sometimes i have a team of people who work with us and i bring them all together and we do this together you could actually do with this with your psychics if you wanted to  and then you hand it to the next person so nico what would you do with a fly swatter oh i was thinking it was more of a back scratcher you know i love that scripture a box of rocks or say very clever all right so then you pass it around and you see all the different it in all kinds of patterns and pictures and this is the minions i don't know if you can actually see it the minions but i write all kinds of fun things with this because it is makes a loud noise know so you couldn't you could they put several on and decorate yourself or i could use that as a hat ok i think yeah i think i have looking good all right nico what would you do now i haven't had a breakfast today so i was going to use this you know brush my teeth after you know who created of i knew you had to so i was the right game for you this is wonderful so this is an activity again just grab things around the house you can do it with your child you can do it with someone you're trying to just creativity as well as your own just to get you ready to interact and to dissipate and do fun things to thank you niko for joining i really mean this was fun this is fun this was fun and i really appreciate you sharing your gifts with our audience and really the world and it means so much to me it means a lot to everyone else i appreciate that and thank you and i look forward to seeing you next time you're going to be inspired because you're going to get to meet my daughter who's going to talk to us about siblings as you know are our other children are very important to the growth and development of our children with autism as well as important to our family as a whole unit so we're going to talk really indeed and honestly about sibling relationships and until then i wish you all well thank you for joining me i look forward to seeing you next time on navigate autism with jane land