In this compelling episode, NYC Special Education Attorney Adam Dayan sits down with Gemma, the mother of “Penny,” a longtime client of Law Offices of Adam Dayan. Gemma shares her personal journey navigating the often-overlooked challenges girls face in receiving an autism diagnosis. With symptoms that tend to present differently—often more masked—many girls, like Penny, are diagnosed later than boys. Penny wasn’t identified as being on the spectrum until ages 6 to 7, resulting in missed vital early intervention services. Adam and Gemma discuss the critical need for awareness, timely diagnosis, and tailored support for girls with autism.
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ANNOUNCER: This is Curious Incident, a podcast for special needs families, and your window into the world of special education. Special needs parenting can be challenging, and we want to make it easier by providing you with the resources you need to help your child. Still deep into the world of learning differently with your host, special education attorney Adam Dayan.
ADAM: I’m very excited to present my next client as a guest on this podcast. Today I am speaking with Gemma, we’re keeping it anonymous for the privacy of Gemma’s children. My law firm has represented Gemma and her daughter for the last three school years. Her daughter is 11 years old and she’s on the autism spectrum. Gemma is familiar with the process of dealing with her daughter’s school district and securing appropriate services on her daughter’s behalf. Gemma, thank you so much for being here.
GEMMA: Happy to be here, I’m excited.
ADAM: Please share a little bit about yourself and your family with our listeners.
GEMMA: I’m an executive assistant. I work remotely, mainly because of my child being on the spectrum, and it’s easier to be close to home. So I’ve been fortunate enough to work remotely throughout this whole process. And my husband works for an airline, and I have two daughters, a 13 year old and an 11 year old. And the 11 year old has autism level two and four other related disabilities.
ADAM: Do you want to say what they are?
GEMMA: So level two autism is kind of the main disability and also oppositional defiance. DMDD, which is basically the child version of bipolar, which can possibly develop into a situation where you have to take medication, separation anxiety, which is very much related to my daughter being on the spectrum, also ADHD, which obviously is a big component to her education and how she’s able to focus in the classroom.
ADAM: And it’s not uncommon for children with autism to have these comorbidities.
GEMMA: Oh, exactly. Yeah. In fact, I’ve even heard of other things such as epilepsy and other more kind of medical disorders of the brain. So you kind of have to get the initial diagnosis. And then from then you monitor the child for the first couple of years after the diagnosis, just to see if there’s any signs of anything else. You want to separate each thing, but also the autism spectrum can play into things that will maybe look like something else that aren’t.
ADAM: At what point in Penny’s life did it become apparent that she would require added support?
GEMMA: The first time that we were actually told by a school was when Penny was three, things like climbing on the table at school, really showing signs of maybe the ADHD, never was at once brought to our attention that she could be on the spectrum. I think it’s just not something that teaches at that age that it may be trained to even be on the lookout for, which is interesting. So I would say around three, which is when we moved to New York, and it just so happened that you can start school at age three. So we were lucky enough to immediately enroll her in this very small private school that also had a public school classroom, so to speak. It was kind of a blended setup. And so we would utilize them during the summer for after school programs, as well as during the summer for summer camp. So Penny spent a lot of time there. And over the course of time, but literally three teachers said, you might want to get her diagnosed or just kind of look into this. And then that’s when we started noticing at home the oppositional deficiency, which was actually the very first disorder that she was diagnosed with by her pediatrician.
ADAM: So the ODD, the autism diagnosis, the DMDD that you mentioned, the separation anxiety, and the diagnosis. And then when did those diagnoses follow?
GEMMA: I would say closer to age six and seven, which was really late in the game, you would think that that’s kind of still a young age to be diagnosed with just in general, kids don’t start school until maybe age five. There’s a lot of studies I’ve read about even if you’re teaching children a second language, that it all has to happen before age seven. So I would say that once we got to that age group with her, it was really hard, especially because it was during the pandemic. So as you can imagine, and you know, there were no services to be had. So ABA therapy, which is a key component to helping children learn behavioral, not just behavioral kind of ways of going about things, but also where they can send someone into the household. We couldn’t receive any of these services for Penny. Probably because number one, the pandemic, second of all, there’s waiting lists for all of these services. And without the diagnosis at a younger age group, it made it harder because I came to realize that people that had children that were being diagnosed at say age two, they were getting services before my daughter. Not really sure why that was, maybe because the same as childcare, that’s easier to get for whatever reason, as an infant versus a child at school age. So I’ve noticed that there’s kind of this need for the diagnosis to happen earlier, and then also services to be immediately given upon the diagnosis.
ADAM: Give us a sense of some examples of the kinds of issues Penny was struggling with before the pandemic hit.
GEMMA: The teachers at age three were noticing the hyperactivity. So that you would associate just if you didn’t know much about it, you would say, oh, maybe she has ADHD. However, because she was a girl, she was masking some of these behaviors, which is really interesting when you analyze, you know, I’ve been able to do this as a parent because of the types of schools that she’s been in. I’ve been able to see what this looks like in the two genders.
ADAM: Can you tell us?
GEMMA: Yeah, so basically at the therapeutic school that Penny was attending, I was noticing it was probably 80% boys versus 20% girls that even were in the program. And that might be because the diagnosis is maybe easier and more cookie cutter in a boy versus a girl. So for example, when Penny would have the what we thought was oppositional defiance. That was the first trait. Now, you could say, oh, this child’s just being difficult because they’re a child or you could think slightly differently and think, okay, maybe she doesn’t want to go somewhere because the environment of where we’re going to take her could be the grocery store somewhere. And there would be this huge meltdown prior to going somewhere. So after talking to other parents with boys on the spectrum, they’re not having to process kind of like, oh, where are we going to be going? When are we going to be going? And kind of like living out that experience before you’ve even stepped foot outside the house with girls on the spectrum. There’s a lot of almost acting out how they’re going to behave in public. At first, I thought, how is this even possible for a young person to even be thinking to do this? And after speaking to parents that have boys on the spectrum, you know, I would save certain things and they wouldn’t understand what I’m talking about. And then the few girls that I know of, they would say almost like a carbon copy of how Penny was behaving, their children were behaving the same.
ADAM: And the masking component that you mentioned, what can you explain to our listeners? What is that masking? What does it mean? How does it manifest?
GEMMA: It manifests in the sense of being so nervous about that how you’re being perceived. So obviously I have to use the types of words, the language that Penny’s going to understand for her age. So if I say the word perceived, she may now know what that means, but definitely not back in the beginning. So for example, she will dress a certain way. If there’s any little speck of, you know, fluff or anything on her clothing, it will mean that she’ll come back in the house, either get changed or we’ve completely lost the momentum in even leaving the house. So the teachers were noticing that she would want to wear the same clothes every day. She’d want to take the same route to school, which was, you know, very disruptive to my other daughter because my other daughter maybe needed to go to the store or something on the way to school and it would throw off everybody’s world. So I would say that the masking is very subtle, but yet when you’re the parent and you’re seeing this everyday routine, you start to tap into what you can change because some of the things you can, of course, change the way you walk to school or work or whatever it is or to the store. But what you can’t change is the fact that the student has to go to school. You know, you have to find some way every day of getting them to cooperate.
ANNOUNCER: If you like what you are hearing, please let us know by subscribing to the Curious Incident Podcast and letting other special needs parents know about it too. Give you a thoughts, questions, comments, or I would like to suggest ideas for a future episode. We’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast@dayanlawfirm.com.
ADAM: So I know you started to talk about the kinds of schools that Penny has attended. Can you just elaborate on that? Where did she start off and where did she transition to?
GEMMA: Yeah, so Penny’s had an interesting educational background. The reason I say that is because the irony of being able to start her at age three, actually even before that, we can go back further. When we lived in Walnut Creek, California near San Francisco, both of my children were born there, my husband’s from the Bay Area, my husband and I both work full time. I am an executive assistant in finance, so I had to find really good childcare from day one. And in places like California and New York, very expensive, but I noticed that the childcare there was educational base. So you weren’t just dropping your child off at a step ahead center or wherever it was just to be looked after. They were coming home with like, oh, this is what numbers we counted up to today. So it’s frustrating to me that we had Penny enrolled from age 12 weeks old whenever I went back to work after maternity leave, to the present time, or even going back to the diagnosis at age six, seven, that how we came that far without anybody, all these educational experts, so to speak, well trained master’s degrees, some having like psychology backgrounds, and not one person was able to identify, including who I very much respect her pediatrician in the Bay Area. She was able to diagnose every medical thing under the sun, but not this one thing that would have created a just a smooth path for Penny. So I would say that, you know, from from the childcare in the Bay Area to then us moving here when Penny was just approaching age three, think she was about two and a half when we moved here to New York. Then I put her in the school that was kind of like private slash public from age three until five, then she naturally just went to the local public school. They for whatever reason didn’t take note of what the school prior was telling them. They were really clear this child has traits of ADHD. That was an ignored and or maybe not ignored, but kind of like, Oh, was she’s not disrupting
ADAM: the classroom or communication breakdown, perhaps possibly.
GEMMA: Yeah, very much so because I’ve come to realize that that’s a huge part of this. So she attends this public school and starts being quiet to the point where they’re talking about her hearing. This is a little girl that’s been to every wellness check under the sun and never had a problem with hearing, never not. I shouldn’t say never not responds to things because that’s not a hundred percent true. Some of the characteristics of autism is to look like you’re not listening, but it’s just where you’re kind of switching off from the world. But we weren’t seeing kind of this quietness at home. We were seeing the oppositional deficiency. So in the school setting, she sat at the back of class, not cooperating, not even putting her hand up. And it was because she was suffering with all of these problems. And even when I got the diagnosis and presented this to the school, they I think maybe because they hadn’t caught on to the diagnosis just couldn’t even look me in the eye and say, we now see what you were talking about.
ADAM: This part kills me personally, the suffering silently. And when professionals ignore or miss that, there’s a lack of curiosity to understand what’s going on inside this child that’s causing them to be silent or act out or present in this manner that kills me.
GEMMA: Yeah. So if I hadn’t been so persistent, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. But every time I kind of rallied around and helped Penny with just even getting through the door of school, even just telling them during the pandemic where parents couldn’t go into the school, please, can you make sure that she is told to go to the bathroom? Can you imagine actually having to tell the teachers and these are all substitute teachers, et cetera, having to go up to the child and tell her, do you need the bathroom, for example, all of these things that we all take for granted because a child that doesn’t have these disabilities simply would just, you know, put their hand up and leave the classroom.
ADAM: So eventually through your persistence, she ends up at a therapeutic school, correct?
GEMMA: Yes, thanks to you. Oh my gosh. Well, that’s like a whole journey in itself. I say that because if you remember, Adam, I had applied for her to switch schools to another public school before I even knew that I could utilize special needs legal services to even go through this process. I had enrolled her in a different school that just had more special needs support because the school that she was at, part of the reason, believe it or not, why they weren’t being as helpful as they should have been is because they had a shortage of special needs teachers. So therefore, her IEP was not being followed correctly. And so instead of telling me as a parent, though, by the way, we’re mandated to give her these services, but she has not been receiving them, you know, they then failed to do that. So she would just go, you know, who knows weeks and weeks without certain services. So I have enrolled her. What I thought I had done is enrolled her in a different school within the district, not too far from where we live. And the principal was responsible for signing off on this transfer. She failed to do so. My other daughter, I didn’t notice this until it was a little too late. My other daughter had already enrolled in a charter school. So it was when I went to take Penny to this other school, day one, I think it was actually on my birthday in September, because school started a little late because of the pandemic. We show up and Penny’s not on the list. So I’m at that point, just mortified because now I don’t have her in any school. So I received your information through a neighbor of mine who had recommended that we utilize these services. And you were kind enough to actually research therapeutic schools, which I had no idea even existed. And Penny ended up at a school called Epic Academy in Brooklyn, which involved a long commute, like an hour each way. But boy, that school was the best thing. It just opened my eyes up to things that I didn’t even think were possible for my child academically and socially. It just took the stigma out of things.
ANNOUNCER: If you like what you are hearing, please let us know by subscribing to our podcast and letting others know about it too. If you have thoughts, questions, comments, or would like to suggest ideas for a future episode, we’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast@dayanlawfirm.com.
ADAM: So prior to ending up at Epic Academy and prior to engaging legal services, what was keeping you up at night? What were you most worried about?
GEMMA: What was really frustrating is that I saw that Penny really had a desire to learn, to be in school. Penny actually really enjoys the institution of school. And she loves her friends. And she tries to kind of cultivate these friendships one on one. And she’s incredibly popular. Like she’s someone that the children and teachers gravitate towards. So I would say the frustration of the whole process, the process from initiating the need, you know, reaching out to going through all the processes with reaching out to the Department of Ed saying that I’ve identified a school for her to go to, but not knowing whether or not it would get approved. And that worry of even just all of the financial obligations, everything that kind of ties into, is this, are we doing the right thing? But I said to my husband, we can’t not go through this process. This has got so serious because of the late diagnosis, the lack of, you know, making it to the top of any of these ABA short lists. In fact, I had her on, I think three or four lists with private ABA therapy where people would come to the house and we never made it to the top. I think we got to the maybe third and then they, I think something happened with our insurance where then it made it so they didn’t accept the insurance anymore. And anyone who knows anything about special needs services are very expensive to try and do this by yourself.
ADAM: Right. And I want to get there next, but before I do, I just want to focus on one more piece, right? So you’re discussing the circumstances that helped you realize you needed legal assistance to ensure Penny was receiving inappropriate education. And I understand that there was a component where the school started blaming you for some of the ways that Penny was presenting in the classroom. Do you want to talk about that?
GEMMA: Oh, yeah. That’s actually, I’m glad that you brought that up because the feeling of being judged as a parent, like it’s your fault that the child has this wrong with them. That’s the feeling that I was left with. I was also really torn because I felt in my mind that I was doing the right thing for her. And when I asked friends, family, you know, my family live in England, I said, my sister’s a social worker, I said, am I, am I picking the wrong battles here? Like, what do you think? And she said, no, you’re advocating for that. That word was very key. It was actually really modifying because actually a social worker did a check in with me. And when they met with myself, I had a close friend who had known us for, I don’t know, probably two weeks into moving to New York. And this woman, our friend, she was a retired police officer. She actually had a degree criminal psychology. And so she had noticed some traits in in Penny. So I bought her along to this meeting. It was just like a kind of just check in. I didn’t have to agree to the check in, by the way, but I did because I thought it would be beneficial. The social worker then, when she advocated for my family, started to get the same pushback from the Department of Ed at least at the school level, which is unbelievable that a New York City social worker who is there to kind of build this relationship, so to speak, and to advocate, she could not believe the things I had done to help my daughter that were being seen as a negative.
ADAM: That’s very upsetting. Yeah. Let’s get back to the financial piece that you brought up. There’s a definite financial aspect of parenting a child with special needs. What are some of the added challenges you face financially as a result of Penny receiving supports that may not be necessary for a typically developing child?
GEMMA: I would say there’s all these extras. There’s little things that you might kind of think of. That’s just a couple of dollars or what have you. So children typically on the spectrum, and I just say typically because I’ve seen this more often than not, have a lot of issues with sensory issues. So for a child that doesn’t have these issues like my other child, you might just be able to buy kind of your run of the mill, whatever. Like I mean, it could be a non-brand thing from the dollar store. But for some reason, my daughter Penny, she is very particular about drinking out of even a container that she can see through. There’s all of these add-ons when it comes to the grocery bill. They’re very, very picky-edos. I don’t like to say picky-edo because that’s not fair. That’s something that you might say about anybody, right? But with a child on the spectrum, they actually have the sensory part of it is quite traumatizing to them, which makes sense that you have to buy certain foods. And even as a younger child, like toys and things, because everything is uniform with children on the spectrum. So even the toys that they play with have to be very clean, like almost fresh out of the box. They actually will think that something’s contaminated. And I would say that beyond kind of like your everyday household things and clothing and etc. I would say just like all of the activities that you do. So a lot of sensory activities, trampoline, things that are like a little bit more pricey than just going to maybe your local swimming pool, even things like that become an issue where she will only go to certain locations. And then I would say the other piece to this is all the services. The other thing I will touch upon if you’re a working professional and you have private health insurance, the system will go with your private health insurance before you would ever receive any services from the state. And I bring that up because I’ve even had friends that have had to quit working because of having a very young child on the spectrum. And they don’t have anyone to leave them with. So childcare is very expensive when it comes to special needs children because of the liability people get nervous. But this particular friend, she had her child diagnosed. I would say a year after Penny and she received services almost immediately purely because she was already kind of receiving some kind of maybe food stamp assistance, etc. But they see a parent that’s working full time as somebody who can afford these types of services if they can’t find them through insurance. But I would say that just the overall expenses when you combine the legal services, I feel that your office, for example, made it very easy for us to kind of deal with that aspect. I can’t speak to other law firms, but I definitely feel like that was like the least of my worries because I knew that you were representing us well. And after we got to, you know, through the first year into the second, I kind of became much more relaxed with the process and realized that it was money well spent because if you’re holding down a full time job or career or you simply have to work, you can’t have your child refusing every day to go to school. So if this is a solution to that piece of it, that it’s all combined. And I think that, you know, from the financial side of things in your law office, you did a very good job of and your staff of kind of really seeing the whole family as a whole. You’re not just kind of focused on winning a case or what have you. It’s more than that. It’s like we’re part of a family and nobody’s trying to make things more difficult for the family going through something that’s already very complex.
ADAM: I am really happy to hear you say that. That’s certainly very important to me and my team. And I’m glad to hear that it comes across. You’ve raised so many important considerations here. There’s a lot there to digest. And it’s obvious that there’s so many layers and considerations for a parent who’s got a child with special needs and being a working parent complicates that even further. Having been a client of our firm for as long as you have, are there any other points you would share with others who are in similar situations looking to start out on their journey? What are some of the most important qualities you think they should be looking for in a
GEMMA: firm? You know, as I mentioned before, kind of like that sense of community, Adam, you have a family of your own. I felt that yourself and your legal team as a whole, even as far down as an assistant or somebody that’s just working on things from the admin standpoint. I feel as though everybody at your firm is incredibly well educated in the process. So even if they have to refer you up to somebody higher up in the firm to speak on the matter, I feel as though there was a sense of community that everybody was in this to kind of not so much just the winning aspect. Because I think that that’s a huge part of this. But the main component was just knowing that you had a child’s best interest at heart.
ADAM: Thank you so much for sharing that.
ANNOUNCER: And letting other special needs parents know about it too. If you have thoughts, questions, comments, or would like to suggest ideas for a future episode, we’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast@dayanlawfirm.com.
ADAM: Gemma, we’ve talked about how consistency is very important for a child to thrive. Is there anything that you would recommend for parents that they can do outside of school, at home, for example, to help with keeping things consistent?
GEMMA: So this is where you have to kind of like have the whole family buy into this. So for example, my 13 year old, 13 year old going on 16, she’s so mature. She has really helped from a child’s perspective that’s not on the spectrum. She’s been able to kind of really help navigate things so that way you can find things to do and structure your kind of like world outside of school where everybody can have fun and also kind of keep the piece and keep everything steady. So for Penelope, ironically, she kind of like discovered her own, you know, activity, so to speak, that actually helps her with all of her diagnosis. One day, years ago, she ran into our living room and did the splits with no formal gymnastics training whatsoever. Held with she may be three or just under the age of three.
ADAM: I was hoping you would talk about this.
GEMMA: This is like my get proud moment and look at your eyes. And this just goes to show that a child on the spectrum can do all of these things. Like if they have an interest, especially if they have a very focused interest in something. So she does the splits. The funny part of it also is my husband’s family is Romanian. Whenever I’m around his Romanian side of the family, they’re always talking about Nadia Kumeneach, the famous Romanian gymnast who scored the perfect 10. I think maybe like age four, we put Penny in gymnastics three or four just for fun. Then one of the coaches said, Oh my gosh, she’s so talented. We laugh at the videos because the forward rolls and things are off center. Like we’re thinking, OK, well, maybe this is a thing. Maybe she’s she’s double jointed for one. So we thought, OK, well, she’s double double jointed can do the splits. What else can she do? We didn’t know this at the time because we didn’t have the ADHD diagnosis. But we then realized that the actual act of gymnastics in the sport and being upside down has like some therapeutic medical like they’ve actually done medical research on being physically upside down to most of us that would you could only do that for a little while or it would be uncomfortable. But for her, she actually said that she gets a sense of relief, a calming feeling. So this again is a young child telling me this. So years later, we get her into another gym that offers kind of all the different levels up until level nine, I believe, which is pretty high up. So currently, Penny’s level, technically level six, and she has been to two state competitions. And this is her thing. This is her. Oh my goodness. If school could be in a gym and she could just run around and well, that makes me want to touch on the whole Epic Academy, there was actually a sensory gym in the school. So she could go on the climbing wall and do all these back flips and things and show her friends. So that was the hook that probably helped her during the day. But in a regular school setting, you can’t obviously do that. So it’s just really interesting how a sport like that actually helps her kind of like self-regulate. Yeah. It’s the best way to describe it.
ADAM: And just to make sure I heard you correctly, so the highest possible level is nine. She’s already at a six and she’s been to two state championships.
GEMMA: Well, that’s her gym, but level nine is where once you get through level six, then you’re going out of state to competitions and then so on and so forth. So I mean, when I was signing her up the first time for the US women’s gymnastics, it’s like Simone Biles has the same exact medals as her because that’s how the whole, you know, you’re in a database. So the database is controlled by the gym you go to because they have to verify that you’re able to, you know, do the skills needed for each level. But the way that Penny makes this look effortless is unbelievable. And she told me the other day that she wants to be a gymnastics coach, because I keep asking her like, what do you want to do? And she just said that she is really good at what they call spotting, which means that when another gymnast is doing like the bars or something, it’s the, you see the coach to this like really close to the person. And that’s to make sure they don’t fall. And you have to have a really good understanding of the technical element of gymnastics to, to know when to literally pull the mat away or step in the skills that she can do physically, but also the learning of like the body, learning that if you overshoot kind of the vault, that you could literally, you know, break your neck or injure yourself in a really severe way. So the fact that she’s shown interest in the kind of academic side of it is mind blowing.
ADAM: Yeah. Maybe we’ll see her on TV at the Olympics one day coaching the US Olympic team.
GEMMA: Yeah. Or she might go after the Romanian team and coach them. Who knows? Make them have a comeback that yeah, it’s great and really, really proud.
ADAM: Nice. That’s beautiful. Tell our listeners what a typical day in the life of a parent of a special needs child looks like for you.
GEMMA: I would say structured. Now the benefit of my job is I’m an executive assistant. And, you know, Adam, you have an assistant as well. So you know, that’s very calendar oriented. So everything kind of has a time slot. And there’s, you know, of course, wiggle room, things come up. So I’ve, you know, I have the benefit of like having that skill set. I’ve actually applied that to Penelope’s schedule. Typically, a day for Penny would be, you know, very much like a calendar, like a, like a corporate calendar. If I go off topic and move on to something that she’s not expecting, like say lunchtime ends up being, you know, we’re busy and it ends up being it too. Even that could throw her off and kind of really mess up the rest of the day, not just for her. I sometimes don’t worry about myself as much because I’ve come to realize that I have to really bend and flex to kind of the mood that she’s in. I can pick up immediately what that’s going to look like. So to your point, some days have to kind of, we have to kind of like be very flexible because maybe she’s just woken up and she’ll say, I’m tired. So then if she’s tired, that means that she just wants to kind of, you know, maybe, maybe play Roblox and sit there or really just kind of like zone out and be by herself. And then there are days where she’ll get up, pick out her outfits. Again, she’s like very, very into how she looks, how she’s being presented to the world. A lot more than my other daughter. Now that could just be a personality trait, but I really do believe in my gut feeling tells me that it’s her again, masking. It’s like a uniform. But for her, it has to happen in order for her to have a good day. So I think that really overall, our day has to just
ADAM: be so structured. Gemma, what are some of the most rewarding aspects of parenting a child with
GEMMA: special needs? Seeing the world differently. You know, every parent sees the world kind of light through their child’s eye under normal circumstances. So for example, you know, my elder daughter, Esme, she is a very, very old soul. So she’ll talk about really interesting things like Penny and Esme’s grandfather, my dad, he said, I have some of the most interesting conversations with the girls versus like grownups. And it’s because they’re like, they’re innocent, right? They’re looking at things kind of like matter of fact, and us grownups are kind of like analyzing and kind of like, well, that doesn’t make sense that somebody’s doing this that way. But to a child, it’s kind of like they’re going all the way through that they’re getting from A to Z, where we’re listening to all the noise. So I think the most rewarding part is seeing this through a different lens. And some of it’s actually more interesting than not seeing it through the lens
ADAM: of somebody that’s not on the spectrum. Well, Penny is lucky to have you for a mom. And you’ve been incredibly persistent and resourceful and making sure she gets what she needs. And I’m wondering if you have any final words of encouragement, you’d like to give our listeners and any parents out there who are going through this process. I would just say that, you know,
GEMMA: don’t I know it sounds, you know, just kind of the typical thing to say, but honestly, don’t give up.
ADAM: On that note, let’s bring it home. And I just want to say that it’s been wonderful having this conversation with you. You’ve shared so many insights from your personal experience and journey that I know are going to be helpful to our listeners. I’m so happy that you wanted to come on the show and share your story. And I know that it’s going to help a lot of people. So thank
GEMMA: you so much for being here. Thank you, Adam. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Jima.
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