Life Skills Download: Doing Laundry
Download, ADD/Autism Emily Bylund Download, ADD/Autism Emily Bylund

Life Skills Download: Doing Laundry

Today I am introducing a new "Life Skills" digital download to add to the "Life Skills" series! If you're new here, I have dozens of digital downloads for neurodivergent families and kids in the shop. They are all free or $5 because I wanted them to be as accessible as possible. They are all based around systems that we have tried and that work in our home. I started the "Life Skills" series to help our daughter work through different skills that will help her in life with easy step by step directions so she can build good habits. Today we're tackling the skill of doing a load of laundry.

Read More
Lost Items Checklist and Download
ADD/Autism, Download Emily Bylund ADD/Autism, Download Emily Bylund

Lost Items Checklist and Download

I have an exciting new download in the shop to share! If you don't know, I have dozens of downloads that range from zero to $5. I have tried really hard to make them as accessible to as many people as possible. They are specifically geared for neurodivergent families, like mine, but can also be used for the general population and I have made it my mission to make them as near affirming as possible. The new download that I have is a lost item checklist. This is something that is a struggle in my house. My autistic daughter really struggles with losing her belongings and then attempting to find them. We often deal with the emotional dis-regulation and overwhelm that comes with not being able to find the things she wants. So I made a checklist for her so that she can walk through and independently search for her missing items.

Read More
Navigating the Special Education System Part 4: IEP vs ISP
ADD/Autism Emily Bylund ADD/Autism Emily Bylund

Navigating the Special Education System Part 4: IEP vs ISP

 Welcome to back to my series about navigating the special education system. Today I want to talk about the difference between IEPs and ISPs. I've previously touched on what an IEP is, so head back to that post first if you need a refresher if you need it, but I wanted to go more into depth on what an ISP is and the difference between the two.

Read More
Life Skills Download: Taking a Shower
ADD/Autism, Download Emily Bylund ADD/Autism, Download Emily Bylund

Life Skills Download: Taking a Shower

When we lived in Argentina last year, one of the things that I started doing was a life skills to help my autistic daughter with activities of daily living. I did "taking a bath", but also made a "taking a shower" version of it as well because they require different steps. When we were in Argentina, I put it up on the wall in the bathroom so that she knew exactly what she needed to do with pictures and a checklist. In the time that we've been back she's stopped baths altogether and has struggled a little bit with the steps in the shower. So, I decided to pull the "taking a shower" download back out to help her.

Read More
Summertime Unpredictability Downloads
ADD/Autism, Download Emily Bylund ADD/Autism, Download Emily Bylund

Summertime Unpredictability Downloads

Today I want to talk about the things that we do in our house to help get us through the unpredictability of summer. If you're new here, I have ADHD. I thrive on just waking up in the morning and decided then what we're going to do for the day. However, my daughter is autistic, and she does so much better on a schedule. She thrives on the structure and schedule of the school year and we even do the summer school program that our county offers because she loves the structure so much. So, I have a few free downloads that help her with the unpredictability of summer that could maybe help your little too!

Read More
Organizing My Autistic Daughter’s Toys
ADD/Autism, Home Emily Bylund ADD/Autism, Home Emily Bylund

Organizing My Autistic Daughter’s Toys

I'm currently building wall to wall built-ins in my daughter’s room. She is autistic and one of her special interest is toys. She has SO many little figurines she collects and knows and plays with each of them. I'm building this so she has a place to keep all of them and we can still stay organized. I want to go over how exactly I'm organizing all the stuff to best fit her needs, so today we are going to sort, label and dejunk her room.

Read More
Navigating the Special Education System Part 3: How to Start Advocating
ADD/Autism Emily Bylund ADD/Autism Emily Bylund

Navigating the Special Education System Part 3: How to Start Advocating

Lets get back into navigating the special education system. I've talked about my personal experience as a kid, then my experience as a parent. Now I want to start getting into the nitty gritty and give information about HOW exactly to advocate. First I want to give a couple of caveats. 1) I am not an educator or a professional, I'm a parent. There are so many other creators out there that are IEP advocates, teachers, and professionals in these fields that you should seek out, as well and do your own research. 2) I live in the United States. I have zero experience with any other country other than the United States. Along with that many things vary from sate to state and I only have experience with states that I have lived in. With that, I've done a lot of research myself so lets get started.

Read More
Home Organization Tips for ADHD
ADD/Autism Emily Bylund ADD/Autism Emily Bylund

Home Organization Tips for ADHD

Hi! I'm Emily. If you are new here I am a 33 year old mom with ADHD. I was diagnosed when I was 16 years old so I have had more than half my life to come up with coping strategies and systems that help me to succeed. With these systems in place, I'm able to navigate my ADHD in my day to day life. I'm always trying to make our space at home more neurodivergent friendly because everyone in my family is neurodivergent and these systems help me to make that happen. I want to share how I utilize those systems to make our home function properly.

Read More
Train Trip Social Story
Download, ADD/Autism Emily Bylund Download, ADD/Autism Emily Bylund

Train Trip Social Story

As the ADHD mom of an autistic child, I have made it my mission to make social stories that are neuro-affirming and focused on the viewpoint of the child that needs them, rather than how the child is impacting people around them. Currently, I'm working on transportation social stories. So far I've got airplane and ferry boat and now train! I'm gonna walk you through how I put this together, what it looks like on the inside, and how we use it.

Read More