LA: Welcome to Special Needs Daily, because laughter is a therapy we can all afford. Before we get started, I want you to listen to something. This is an actual recording from my first attempt at making today's episode. I was halfway through the recording discussing the mental load of special needs parenting, the importance of planning, Anticipating what comes next and then well just listen. And that, my friends, is the sound of a special needs mom realizing she's three minutes late to meet the school bus. Those four lovely beeps, Me censoring the four F bombs I dropped, the footsteps, me flying down 16 stairs across the living room and bolting out the front door. And the truly remarkable part, my microphone got it all. Even though it was upstairs in the loft. I didn't even stop recording. I just ran. So first, a shout out to my Sure Microphone, which has better situational awareness than I do. And second, if you ever wondered what happens when a special needs mom forgets something on her carefully organized schedule, you just heard the director's cut. You can't make this stuff up. And now if you'll excuse me, I believe I was about to explain the importance of planning. the irony. You know that old saying, Wanna make God laugh? Tell him your plans. Well, I've got an updated version. Wanna make a special needs mom laugh? Invite her to lunch three weeks from Saturday. Three weeks from Saturday? What am I psychic? You want me to commit to a restaurant at a specific time on a specific date three weeks from now? Can't even guarantee I'll have brushed my hair by noon tomorrow. And the crazy part is, I am responsible. I am organized. Well, you wouldn't know that from that sound bite I just shared, but I digress. I'm raising nonverbal autistic teenage twin boys. So my life requires an extraordinary amount of planning. I'm planning their education, their care, their safety, their financial security, their adulthood, and what happens when I'm no longer here to take care of them. I can plan for what happens to my children after I die. But I certainly can't tell you if I'm available for coffee next Wednesday. How does that make any sense? If you're new here, I'm Lori Ann, LA, a battle-tested single mom to three incredible neurotypical young adults and extraordinary nonverbal autistic teenage twin boys. And today, We're talking about one of the greatest contradictions of special needs parenting. We have to plan for the future, But we can't make any future plans. am I a human contradiction? Or has my calendar just suffered a complete psychological breakdown? Remember when making plans was easy? Somebody would call and say, Hey, wanna grab dinner Friday? And you'd say, sure, what time? That was the entire conversation. No risk assessment, no contingency planning, No consultation with the household's emotional climate. You picked a restaurant. Put on something that didn't have food stains on it, and left the house. Remember leaving the house? Just walking out the door, getting into your car and driving somewhere because you just felt like it? the memories. now when somebody asks me to dinner, I feel like I should respond with a nine page questionnaire. What day? What time? How long will we be there? Is the reservation refundable? And most importantly, how emotionally invested are you in me actually showing up? Because I would hate for you to confuse my enthusiastic acceptance with an actual commitment. at this point, my RSVPs should come with a disclaimer. Acceptance of this invitation does not constitute a guarantee of attendance. Participation is subject to change without notice due to circumstances beyond management's control. And management is me. Here's what I find so fascinating. Spontaneity is no longer a word in my vocabulary. I can't just decide to go somewhere. Everything requires planning. And yet, the only way I can commit to something is spontaneously. Think about that. I cannot be spontaneous, but I can only confirm spontaneously. I need weeks of advanced notice to make arrangements, but I won't know if those arrangements will actually work until approximately five minutes before I'm supposed to leave. How is that not a medical condition at this point? I have routines, schedules, alarms, reminders, and backup plans. My calendar looks like it belongs to a CEO. Of a multinational corporation. Except the corporation only consists of one woman, two teenage boys, several iPads, and a dishwasher that never gets a day off. I'm running a Fortune 500 operation with the predictability of a pop-up carnival ride. And I'm the only employee. Here's another consequence of this scheduling circus. My social circle has gotten smaller. And smaller and smaller. At this point, even calling it a dot is being extremely generous. It's a speck. And the funny thing is, it's been shrinking from both directions. Some people stopped inviting me because they know I can't commit in advance. And others. well let's just say I've helped expedite the downsizing. Because there are only so many times I can explain that I won't know whether I can make Saturday's dinner until Saturday before I start feeling like I'm defending myself in a court of law. And I've worked in litigation. I know when I'm being cross-examined. Well, you knew about this three weeks ago. Yes, counselor, I did. and you couldn't have figured this out sooner? Objection, Your Honor, assumes facts not in evidence. Knowing about an event three weeks in advance doesn't magically give me the ability to predict what's going to happen three weeks from now. If it did, I'd be using that talent to pick lottery numbers, not confirm dinner reservations. now I understand that people have their own schedules, responsibilities, and lives. I respect that. I don't expect anyone to hold an empty chair for me indefinitely. Go ahead, make the reservation, order the appetizers, enjoy yourselves. And please understand that my inability to commit isn't a measure of how much I value our friendship. But if every invitation comes with a side order of guilt because I can't give you a definite answer, well, eventually I stop ordering. Which explains the speck. Some friends have quietly faded because people stopped asking. Others I've stepped away from because I simply don't have the bandwidth to keep explaining a life I've been living for years. And the people who remain. Well, they're pretty extraordinary. They still send me dates for coffee, lunches, walks, and dinners. They understand that I'll let you know isn't code for I'm waiting for something better. They understand that my last minute yes is just as sincere as anyone else's yes three weeks earlier. And they understand that sometimes I genuinely want to be there, but life has other plans for me. It's a speck, but man, it's spectacular. And I am truly grateful for the people in it. Now if you know me, you know I like to understand why things work the way they do. and there is actually some science that helps explain why making a simple plan can involve so much mental effort. one relevant concept is cognitive load. Our working memory has a limited capacity. We can only hold and actively process so much information at one time. And when we're trying to manage several competing demands, that mental effort adds up, which may help explain why I can remember an IEP meeting scheduled three weeks from now, But walk into my kitchen and have absolutely no idea why I'm standing there. Am I hungry? Did I come in here for something? Was I supposed to put something in the oven? And then I remember my coffee, which is in the microwave, where it's already been reheated three times, and yet it's still cold. Because I forgot about it. there's also something researchers call the mental load of household management. It's the invisible work of remembering, anticipating, planning, and coordinating what needs to happen. And that describes a huge part of caregiving. because when somebody invites me to dinner, I'm not simply deciding whether I want to go. I'm thinking about who's going to care for the boys, what arrangements need to be made. What might interfere with those arrangements and what happens if something changes? It's not that I can't make a decision. It's that every decision comes with an entire supporting cast of decisions. For most people, an invitation to dinner means checking their calendar. For me, It means checking approximately 47 things that aren't on my calendar. And after I've checked all 47, there's still a very real possibility the whole thing gets canceled before I even put my shoes on. And none of this means there's something psychologically wrong with us. Sometimes the problem isn't how we're thinking. It's how much we're responsible for thinking about. Let's take something simple. Getting your hair done. Somebody might think, my roots are bad. I'll make an appointment. Wonderful. I, on the other hand, start mentally calculating. What school day can I go? Can I do a cut and color? How long will it take? Can I combine it with errands? What happens if I have to cancel? And by the time I've worked through every possible scenario, I've mentally completed the appointment six times. my hair is still a mess, but my brain has had a full blowout. So when somebody asks me to add one more thing to the schedule, sometimes it feels like walking through quicksand. And don't even get me started on the question where do you want to eat? I don't know. Italian? Maybe. Mexican? Sure. Which restaurant? for the love of God, just pick one. I've spent the entire day making decisions. I don't have another committee meeting in me. Just meet me somewhere where we can eat a meal that I don't have to cook or clean up. That's it. I'm easy. Assuming, of course, I can actually make it. But what makes me laugh is how seriously I take the planning process. I think through every detail. I'll organize everything, color coding and all. I'll even convince myself I've accounted for every possible variable. And then life comes along and introduces a variable I didn't even know existed. at this point I think God looks at my carefully organized schedule and says, Well she's been busy. Aren't all those colours pretty? Here's what I've come to know. A plan is not a promise. It's an intention. And sometimes, despite our best intentions, life has other ideas. But I still make plans. I still put things on the calendar. Because what am I supposed to do? Stop planning? Well, that would be irresponsible. Besides, I've spent a small fortune on technology that sends me reminders of all the things I may or may not accomplish in a day. But underneath the humor, there is something important about all this. For many special needs parents, planning for the future isn't optional. We have to think about who will care for our children, who will protect them, who will understand their needs, And how they'll be supported when we're no longer able to do it ourselves. Those are enormous questions, and they require an enormous amount of planning. Yet while we're thinking about decades from now, we still have to navigate the next 24 hours. And sometimes those 24 hours are a lot more complicated than the next 24 years look on paper. So we plan because we have to. We adapt because we must. And we laugh. because quite frankly, the alternative is to stare at the calendar and wonder who in the hell thought any of this was a good idea. So now circling back to the beginning, maybe I'm not a human contradiction. Maybe the contradiction is what this life requires of me. I'm expected to plan for circumstances that may be decades away while remaining available for whatever happens in the next two minutes. I'm supposed to be organized and flexible, prepared and adaptable. Proactive and reactive, all at the same time. I'm basically a project manager, emergency coordinator, financial planner, bodyguard, personal chef, chauffeur, And crisis response team With no paid vacation And an extremely demanding clientele whom I love more than anything in the world, but whose scheduling department could use some serious improvement. So maybe the goal isn't to get better at predicting the future. Maybe it's to stop feeling like we've failed every time things don't go according to the plan. Because sometimes flexibility isn't the absence of organization. It's what happens when organization meets our reality. And reality has never once asked to see my calendar. So the next time somebody asks if I'm available for dinner two weeks from Saturday, I'm going to give them the most accurate answer I can. I would absolutely love to. And then I'll pause. Because there's an asterisk. And that asterisk says subject to the unpredictable nature of raising two extraordinary teenage boys, the availability of childcare, the general condition of the household, and whether the universe has anything else planned. I realize that's a little lengthy for an RSVP. So I'll probably just say, I'll let you know. Not because I don't care, not because I'm unreliable, but because in my world a plan is really just a wonderful suggestion with a date attached. and one last thing. Remember my little emergency evacuation at the beginning of this episode? Well, I'm delighted to report that I made it to the bus stop a full minute before the bus arrived. Which means I've discovered something rather remarkable about myself. I possess the sprinting abilities of a cheetah at my age. A walk that normally takes me two minutes can, with the right motivation, be accomplished in approximately nine seconds. I'm thinking about entering the Olympics. Although, given my schedule situation, I probably wouldn't be able to commit to showing up until the official cocks the starting gun. And on that note, let's pray. God, give us an abundance of strength, stamina, patience, and compassion for whatever today brings. And please, always give us enough space to find the laughter. Amen. And remember my friends, you're doing way better than you think. I'm LA, and I'll see you next time on special needs daily. Well at least that's the plan.