Autism, girls, and the risks we don’t see with Lila Kimel, Ph.D.

We explore how autism shows up in girls, why masking hides risk, and how explicit teaching around consent, pacing, and online safety can prevent harm. Lila Kopelioff Kimel, Ph.D. shares clinical and lived insight on assessment, advocacy, and building real-world skills.

• girls’ masking, misdiagnosis, and different profiles
• safety education for consent, pacing, and online traps
• sensory needs and hygiene through puberty
• ADHD overlap and social decoding vs distraction
• special interests as bridges, not barriers
• live practice for red flags and boundaries
• school advocacy, IEP gaps, and expert support
• legal pitfalls, consent literacy, and prevention
• co‑parenting, burnout, and finding community
• practical scripts: greetings, goodbyes, repair

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend
Check out Dr. Kimmel's website

Lila Kopelioff Kimel, Ph.D.

Kimel Psychological Services, LLC

Web www.kimelpsych.com 

Email lila@kimelpsych.com

Just relax. You only have to be this side of good enough as a parent, and your kids will be fine.

Transcript

Opening & Mirror Neurons Story

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Legit Parenting, where we've ditched the social media Perfect Parent Advice and talk about what really happens and matters in the trenches of parenthood and family life. I'm Craig Wippenberg, Father 4, Grandfather 2, the Soling Author, Keynote Speaker, and family therapist with over 40 years to experience helping parents understand how their kids' brains work. Through my books, Private Practice and Consulting Work, I've developed practical strategies to help real parents navigate the tough stuff and build reasoning kids. With me is Tony Moreau, producer, and your television mom friend, who's living proof that hot messed mom isn't a stereotype. It's a survival strategy and proof that it's okay. No judgment, no pretending, just real talk from a mom who gets it. Whether you're struggling with school drop-offs, navigating social media drama, trying to hold your marriage together, dealing with a divorce, arranging a kid who doesn't fit the bowl, you're in the right place. This is legit parenting, or we keep it real. And remind you, just relax. You only need to be this side of good enough. Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, Craig Nippenberg, along with my producer Sidney Moreau, who just got back from the Dominican Republic on a much-needed mom's trip. I want to share a quick story, an episode I had at the FedEx copy store of all places. And I was getting ready for a lecture that I was doing the next day, and I needed some handouts quick. And I went to my usual place by my house, and the guy couldn't open up my file. And then so I went back home. I thought, I don't know if I did it wrong, and I could open it. I'm like, what's going on? So I went up to FedEx, and this lovely young woman, she was just so friendly and happy, and she got it open right away, printed in for me. She was just awesome. And so I complimented her on her kindness and hospitality. And we started talking. And she said, I've noticed that when most people come in here, they're very stressed and they're in a hurry. And I feel like my job is to help them relax and just smile and relax with me. And so I talked to her about what I do for my job and behavioral brain stuff. And I said, I explained to her how the system works. And I talked about our nonverbal system. And when people come in stressed and they see her smiling and friendly, their brains process that and sub threshold fires the same muscles in their face. And it actually helps them then relax. And she looked at me and she said, It's like we mirror each other. And I cracked up because I said, actually, they're called the mirror neurons. And I said, You hit the nail on the head. So here's to the woman at FedEx who knew that intuitively and uses that to help people decompress. Now, as we get to autism, the thing to remember is that the mirror neuron system is quite underdeveloped for people with autism. So they really struggle with that. Now, how to help us with that, and I'll read her intro and then I'll tell a personal story about how I first met her, is Dr. Leela Kimmel. And I read her bio. She's a licensed clinical psychologist and is the owner and clinical director of Kimmel Psychology Services. They are growing private practice in Denver. It was established in 2013. Generally speaking, it's four core domains of psychological assessment, individual and family psychotherapy, group therapy, and psycholegal consultation, which we'll talk about at the end. She's also the founder and creator of a Lyft Serv in Colorado called the ASD Psych Lyft Service that currently has 150 members and allows for consultation, referrals, and communication between multidisciplinary, oh my dyslexia is getting to me, autism specialist in the Denver area. And I'm a member of that. And what she has created is just amazing. It is anytime. I just sent an email out yesterday looking for someone to do trauma work with an ASD student of mine. And I've already gotten several responses that I can refer the mother to. Dr. Kimmel's clinic provides comprehensive psychological and neurodevelopmental assessments for people across the lifespan with suspicions of a developmental disorder such as autism, fragilex, Down syndrome, learning disorders, mood disorders, medical complexity, and mood disorders and giftedness. Dr. Kimmel is one of a handful of psychologists across Colorado that is a native Spanish speaker and is paneled with Medicaid, which is a big thing. She's also the mother of three kids, each with neurodiversity. So she knows what she speaks of because it's not just a professional, she lives it as a mom. Dr. Kimmel has a niche interest in serving females on the autism spectrum and has been an expert witness in criminal and civil cases involving individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Well, great bio, and I would tell you before I say hello, my first meeting with Leela, the first time I had heard of her, she was just getting started, as I recall. And she sent me a young man for one of my group therapies that I had the blessing of working with. And as we talked, I found out she was bilingual. So then she became our go-to person when we needed somebody who was bilingual. Since then, she has become just an expert therapist, an amazing businesswoman as well. So, Leela, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you, Crank. And your moms out there will appreciate this. She just dropped her three young ones off a camp and she pulled over and is in her car recording. So that's the multitasking mom right there. And hopefully it's an all-day camp and you don't have to turn around in two hours.

SPEAKER_03 6:11

Oh gosh. Yeah, no, that would be hard.

Autism in Girls: Masking & Misdiagnosis

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Why don't we just start and you can start wherever you want, maybe just talking about autism and then particularly females with autism and how that presents.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

Sure. So I one of the things I do in my private practice is I run a girls group for teen girls with autism spectrum disorder and other related conditions like ADHD and social anxiety. And I got involved in my work with girls back in, I would say, 2002, when I was an extern at JFK partners at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. It's a Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. And we I was a Meadly grad student at the time, working doing several groups there, but um I ended up working with a postdoctoral student at the time, and we created a girls group out there. Since then, that postdoctoral student, Shannon Nichols, has written one of the best books among girls on the girl. It's called, yeah, it's called Girls Growing Up on the Autism Spectrum. And the first author is Shannon Nichols. I forget who the second and third are, but Nichols is spelled M-I-C-H-O-L-S, if anybody wants to look that up. And um what I did is from her book, I created a group that works on some really important life skills for girls. One thing we find that's really common in girls on the spectrum is that they are way more likely to be sexually assaulted if they don't have the correct education about how to form a romantic relationship with someone. And in my practice over the years, I've seen so many girls be taken advantage of. It's really scary. And when I say girls, I just want I want to be clear as I mean female at birth. A lot of the girls that I see all of them are questioning their gender. It's quite common in this population. So I just want to be clear that even though I'm saying that, that's what I really mean. I mean, most of them through the years have attended tons of talks and really tried to understand how the female autistic brain is different than the male. And it's actually quite fascinating to me because when I first started in in grammar school in 2001, we had such little understanding of girls on the spectrum at the time. And and over the years, as we're learning more about on the spectrum, we actually realized that we've been underdiagnosing girls and looking for the wrong things. And most of the things, most of the research had focused so much on boys because of that four to one ratio that we thought existed, that we didn't examine girls well enough. And we would mix them together in research studies, assuming they were the same. And over time, as I followed the research on this, what we're finding is that there's in girls, it's you either, and in my experience and my practice, you either get very extreme, severe symptoms of autism, or you get very mild, where it looks so different than in boys. There's nowadays it's called two categories. They call it the social communication problem category and the restricted interest repetitive behavior category. You have to meet criteria on both of those to be considered an individual with autism spectrum disorder. And you have to have had those problems since you were a little kid. So since the developmental period. So oftentimes for the higher functioning ends of the girl spectrum, we see girls that a lot of parents miss as have as being autistic because they're like they're they're participating in their preschool class. They're they're totally sitting in circle time, they're talking to their friends. But when you take a really close peek and you do a school observation, what you might see are things like this girl is laughing along with her peers, but has no idea what the joke meant. Or this girl wants all the friends to play her game and gets really upset when they don't, or goes off on her own. So her tolerance and patience for her friends is way lower than those of her more neurotypical peers. And yeah.

Safety, Consent & Online Risks

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Just if I might interrupt, I had the privilege of working. She was, I think, 11 at the time, just a darling girl, who would just uh smile and nod. And after all, I'm thinking, I think that's like hollow, and we're not really catching on, but she knew how to just go along. And had never been diagnosed. And then I started working with her mom and talking about it more deeply, but she didn't get picked up because she was pleasant, she didn't act out, and she would just smile and nod. And her was like, Oh, she gets it. Not as deeply as you're hoping she would. And very sadly, she developed a neurological degenerative disorder and now is in her late 20s and unable to move at all. That's been a very sad road for her and her family. But that masking piece is certainly one. And I think to get to those two things you mentioned, the sexual assault. If you think about, I like to think about life as a stained glass window. And in any social situation, your nonverbal system picks up all the little pieces of glass going on around you and puts it together into a picture of, okay, here's what's happening socially with others, or here's how they're feeling, here's what they're thinking. And they have the same interest as every team. And but for people on the autism spectrum, they don't collect as much glass. So their picture of what they think is going on is very small, much smaller compared to what everyone else is thinking and feeling. So they're often prone to making social mishaps or missteps, or just need to fake it, like laughing along at the jokes when you have no clue what it's about. That's a classic. And they miss that now when it comes to sex drive. That's there, like for every teen, but not always fully conscious of this is what others might be thinking, or they may want to take advantage of me. And I remember that's been about 20 years ago at a teen, a young teen girl on the spectrum, and she was sending out these provocative, it was just emails back then, but provocative emails to the boys. And their parents were gone, and she invited them over and had really no idea what she was getting into. And thankfully her parents showed up before anything major happened, but that was very disturbing for them. And she was just like, I was just having fun with them, and they like that.

SPEAKER_03 13:56

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I I've worked with a few teens, and usually, and let me just be clear a lot of our girls with autism, even boys too, it's very common to have ADHD with autism, and genetically they're very related. The other one that's also often common is anxiety disorder in speculation or depression if they start realizing that their friends are excluding them. But what happens is due to the impulsivity of ADHD that goes with the autism a lot of times. I have seen, gosh, I have seen at least in psychotherapy alone, in uh at least five girls where I'll just give you one example. One of them she was she put her profile online. She was soliciting sex from men because she really wanted to see what it was like to be sexual. And the boys at her school weren't liking her, and so she got desperate and wanted to start dating way before she was 18. She knew enough to put her age as 18 and lied online. And uh, and then was meeting men in their cars to have sex, and she did catch an STD. We I got involved too late in the process. They didn't diagnose her until later with ASD, but we had to work really hard on understanding safe ways to meet up a romantic partner and also breaking down the steps to sexuality is so important. How there are it's so critical that parents talk to teens about their process. Like when I met your father, your mother, whoever, I we held hands. We talked first, we got to know each other's friends, we were acquaintances at the beginning, and then we became friends, and then we were friends for a really long time until one day at the movies we held hands, and the hand holding was the first step. We did not go straight to kissing, kissing happened the next day. Then there was more intimate touch and like showing that you don't go straight to sex. That's not gonna create a lasting romantic relationship, and it's not gonna be safe either. And the other thing I've started doing with a lot of teens is getting them involved in the Planned Parenthood program. They have a free sexuality training, at least they did the last time I checked. And they've even modified it for folks with developmental disabilities. I believe it's like a 14-week program they have, and they they've come to speak to my girls' group in the past about consent and assent, which is also a very important topic to discuss, like when it's okay for someone to touch you or for you to touch them or not to touch them. So these are very hard issues to learn about because a lot of girls on the spectrum, at the teen years, are they just want to fit in. They don't want their parent to be monitoring their every email or their every text that goes out or their Snapchats. Some have gotten really wise to it and are deleting these really scary messages. I had another girl who is now identifying as male, but she went through a period where she was exploring her sexuality online through the dark web and was writing an old, she didn't know he was older. She thought he was his age, her age, but it was an older male. She was writing like SDDM kinds of messages. That's like that bondage kind of stuff. Like, I want to torture you, I want to do this, I wanna, I can take the pain too, stuff like that. And it got kinky, it got really strange. And I think her parents found out because I want to say the FBI alerted them to this person luring her as well, but she really got into it back, and she mimicked his language on this stuff as though she knew she was what she was talking about. So when we started therapy, we were really exploring like why would she have ever gotten into this? And what made her go this really strange direction with her first sexual experiences, like just talking about these forms of sex that she shouldn't even know about. And she said she had never tried. What's happening is that with the internet now, it's scary. People are looking up when they don't know about sex, they look up porn, and sometimes the porn that they're looking up is not what other people do for more like mainstream sex. There's everything from foot fetishes on there to SBDM, and a lot of our girls, especially, are looking at this stuff like, oh, I should learn from the pros. And parents sometimes don't catch that this is what is happening, and so it could happen behind their backs. I really oh yeah, go ahead, Craig.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

You have to remember that these students have the same desires as other kids, they want to fit in, but they don't know the deeper process. I know what I was gonna say, that she thought that this other person was her age. Most of the kids now have learned that there's a lot of people who fake that, and there's predators out there, they go catfishing, but for a person on the spectrum, they're gonna take it at face value. So they don't often think deeper about could this maybe this person isn't my age, and they see it and take it at value, and then you throw in all the stuff they're watching. I had a fourth grader who found pictures of nudity through tick, no, through YouTube. And I'm like, Really? You can find it through YouTube? He's yeah, like, okay, great. Unfortunately, his experimentation was just wanting to look at what women look like, and that was about the end of it. He didn't get into deeper stuff, but you could go from just curiosity to full blown, really in the depths of what's for sure.

Gender Questions & Belonging

SPEAKER_03 20:19

It's scary, but one thing we do in the girls' group that I lead is we'll take the girls to live places like the mall or other places that yeah, that they hang out. Yeah, and I will sometimes pay a confederate, an actor, to come and lure them. And so somebody pretends to have lost their puppy or their small child somewhere, and they need one of the girls' phones, or they need them to come along with them to help them find this thing. And at that moment, I see how many of them in the group follow this person or help them, and I stand in their way in the moment, and we do some live learning on how gosh, guys, this was an actor, but if this was a real person, what's the what are some red flags that have told us that maybe we should steer away?

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

And sometimes in the group there's some that already have their red flags up, which is great, and I recognize that, and some that just really struggle to recognize that this person could have been lying to them.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah, and that's often parents, and I'll do this in classes, is the idea of trust your gut. If you think, if you feel something's creepy, you should trust that. But these are uh young women who really don't have that innate sense of this is creepy and just take it at face value and don't really have that gut instinct to go, whoa, this could be fake, this could be dangerous. And often you find I one of the things you often see with kids on the spectrum, males and females, they want to be kind and love, they love animals often, and they're kind with their parents, unless they get stuck on something, then not so much, but they're just kind and maybe, but don't understand that they're not gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

Sometimes, yeah, I get them into trouble. You're right. Just just trying too hard to be kind. I agree.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Yeah, and and fit in one fit in, and yeah. I think the other in terms of questioning your gender, so for our audience, when you look at nonverbal functioning, average fem neurotypical female is about the 76th percentile to 80th percentile for doing it really well. And if after puberty, the your neuron system explodes, it's about double the size of females as males, and it's powered by estrogen, so it happens pretty quick, but for these students it doesn't. And then you think about the average neurotypical male, we're about the 55th percentile, we don't catch on as much as women do, and that's why if you ever say to your male partner, how did you feel about it? And he says, Fine. He's not lying because he hadn't even really thought about it. And then he says, Bean dip was good. Okay, but then as you go down there, that 40th percentile is your engineering type of person, 30th percentile. I was seeing a young man who graduated from the Colorado School of Mines, which is an incredible engineering school here in Colorado, and we're looking at where he is on the spectrum. And he said, Yeah, a lot of my classmates were down there too. Like, yeah. And so when you have a female with it, they often seem to find males easier to get along with because their brain feels more like a typical male's. And then that might lead them to thinking about am I in the right body or am I male or female? We've had a couple of young women who went non-binary and actually had breast removal and ovaries removed. One was at engineered and goes as by a male now. So I see that as fairly common because you really, for female in the spectrum, they're gonna feel like a fish out of water.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Yeah, that's so true. Also, we see a lot of when all the other girls start being interested in dating or in makeup or stuff like that. Sometimes they're those interests might develop, but they might develop later, or they may not care about those things, as a lot of the girls on the spectrum just really don't care so much about mainstream things like that. Some do. But but what happens is for those later developers, they I agree with you, they start thinking about like, why don't I care about this stuff? They're making fun of me because I'm I told those kids in the hallway at school to stop kissing. The role was not to kiss in public. Yeah, very rule-bound. Why are they making fun of me that I don't know what a map blowjob is or what a what this position is, or like they're all talking about something that I should all the other teens know about. And so they start feeling inadequate and start thinking why they might not care about certain things or even certain touch. The sensory system also dictates some of their sexuality as well, because they're like, ew, I can't even imagine someone touching me there or kissing me. I don't like that sensation. And then they start also wondering about that. But it's so common. I think it was Charlotte. She is a researcher who has talked a bit about girls on the spectrum. And she gave a talk a while back that I attended, and also just talking about how the rate of non-binary and transitioning, the stats on how many girls are questioning or transitioning or actually going through transition, they say that it's like 25% of girls on the spectrum are at least considering like a non-binary status. And I think you're right, Craig, that it's often because they feel like a fish out of water, they feel out of place. And it's also for those who don't get diagnosed with autism early enough, sometimes they wonder why they're different at all as humans. And they try to attach themselves to an ongoing group of people that are a little different, a little neurodiverse at school. And oftentimes it falls in the crowd of LGBTQ.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

It's also a formed group.

Early Signs: School-Age Girls

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Yeah, because they they feel some bound, yeah, with other kids who feel different. Now, for the all the teen and young men that I see on the spectrum, the autism spectrum, they really like to game. They get online with their buddies and they do these role play games for hours and hours. And I'm always like, they explain it to me, and I'm like, it's over my head. I don't really know role play games. But rather than actually meeting people and getting out and socializing, they're just on that computer all night, and that's where it ends. And I had a delightful discussion with a young man who's in the spectrum, and he was telling me about his porn and likes to look that at that. And I said, That's pretty neurotypical to have those fantasies and thoughts. But the idea is now to direct your energy into having a real relationship with a real person, and that's what those feelings are telling you to do. But right now, he's too afraid to even talk to a girl. Like he's just and he says, and I'm like, you're really interested, too. I think it'd be easy for you. You've got great hair, you have a great complexion. Uh there's a lot of girls who'd be interested in you, but it's just overwhelming for him to think about as a real person. And what's cool about this young man is he's insightful enough. And he said, I feel guilty on the point because I feel like I'm treating the person as an object. And I said, Exactly. Right. And now we need to move to subjective relationships. But that's a big step. And he's going out with his buddies sometimes because they're 21. And I'm like, good, go out some more. You need to get out there. Now I want us to one one more with your doctor hat on, and then I want to switch to your mom hat with in terms of uh younger children. So let's say our listeners out there have a second grade girl or boy, third grader. Oh, and I remember I I'll just interrupt quick myself, quick. I had a thought earlier about when you mentioned autism, there's this great film, I think it was the late 80s, Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman. Most people think that's what autism is. And you're like, no, it's a spectrum. And there's plenty of people that just have mild symptoms of it. They used to call that Asperger syndrome. And then there's milder. And then you do have kids with severe autism, like Rain Man, but that's often the conception. It's a guy who's an idiot. What do you call it? Idiot savant, who's a savant, and just memorizes facts, and that's their perception of that. But what do you do? So you're a parent, you've got a second, third grade girl, you're not sure how our social processing is going. Sure. What should they look for? Great question.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

So I talked a little bit about the social communication piece of the deficit where it's they're often matching other people or imitating others, but then don't know why. They're they struggle to communicate their thoughts and feelings to others in a way that is sensitive to the other's feelings. So their theory of mind is affected. If they get upset with a friend, they may straight out end the friendship because they have a lot of all or nothing thinking. But with regards to the restricted interests and repetitive behavior area, it's less common for a high functioning girl on the spectrum to be hand flapping. We don't see that as much. What we do see more of Is things like really perseverating on interests that might seem somewhat neurotypical, like a religion, a music group, anime. These are all really big common interests of girls. Sometimes animals, horses in particular, seem to be a big one. And what we see is that with those kinds of special interests, they're very different from those of boys. When we think of more classic boy autism, that's what's described in a lot of the literature. The classic example they say is, oh, they were so interested in cars that they memorized every license plate in the parking lot. And then they wanted to tell their friends about those license plates. Or they were so interested when they were little toddlers and lining up all their toys and staring at the wheels of the car spinning. We don't see that as much in girls. What we see in girls is we do see a lot of sensory problems. So there's a lot of hygiene issues, even from early on in life. Things like, oh, I hate taking showers. I hate brushing my teeth. It doesn't feel good to me. I'm very picky about my foods. We see as puberty hits, it's especially obvious because it's really hard to deal with kind of the period issues that come up and maintaining proper hygiene around that. But then we also see that there are these interests that I'm talking about on the outside to someone, they may be like, Great, she's religious. When you really look closely, they are dogmatic. They are they're stuck on something. They are they really can't deviate from the religion. And if anybody believes it otherwise, they may argue down to death with them. Or if it's music, they may know everything about every musician in it and in every year that they performed and where, and they might remember stuff like that. But it might not come out all the time either, too, because they're such good maskers. Eventually, a lot of higher functioning girls know maybe not to bring it up all the time. What happens though is what I hear from a lot of parents is we might see them at dinner time perseverating a bit with their family on these interests, or where when they take off their mask at home, it becomes a lot more obvious. Oftentimes, I think like Craig mentioned, the internet is really a big one where we see we see them kind of research whatever they're interested in at great lengths. So they might spend, even when they're with their therapist, they're trying to get on their cell phone to look up the new song that they're banned. Yeah. Oh, and they want to show it to you.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

So they whip their phones out. Right.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

And the key to being a good therapist in this population, I think, is to really care about their interests too. And that's your aunt. That that is to embrace it, not to avoid it. To embrace it, and if it's not age appropriate, to slowly work on modifying it to make it a little bit more age acceptable. I had one girl a little bit lower functioning on the spectrum who was so interested in Barney. And she was 16, and she had every Barney movie, and she wouldn't get rid of them from her childhood. That was just, she was so stuck on them. And we slowly had to work toward modifying that interest to maybe some anime or cartoons that other people her age would appreciate. We also decided that she could only listen to Barney at certain times of the day when she wasn't with her peers. She couldn't bring him up more than once, and it had to be only with her parents. So we really worked on modifying it, not getting rid of it completely. But over time, uh her interest grew in these other areas. So we started getting really happy giving away her Barney movies to little kids and seeing the joy in their faces when she would give it to them. So it became she even did it with my kids. I probably crossed the line there as a therapist. But but she's Dr. Kimmel, here, take this for your children. And uh to this day, I have 20 of her Barney videos at my house. They don't watch them anymore, of course, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

The peer feedback is okay, she's in the barn, or they still like Paw Patrol, and they're in fifth grade. And then they get the peer feedback from the other girls about that's for babies, that's baby stuff, and they're all into the latest contemporary things for their age group. So they get the negative feedback on that. And I love the idea of helping them expand their interest or move them up a little bit. The most unique one I ever had, this was uh with a male who was twice exceptional, so he was gifted, and his was Tiffany Glass. And he would study Tiffany Glass and knew all the different kinds of lamps and what they were worth. And you're like, wow, right? Now, one I had one boy who his obsession was real estate.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Exactly.

Special Interests & Sensory Profiles

SPEAKER_00 35:05

And I'm like, that's probably good for your future. You're gonna make some money on that one. That's a good thing. But yeah, I think though looking for those things, I think in terms of differential diagnosis, I find one of the hardest ones is is it ADHD? So the student gets lost in their thoughts in the middle of class or in the middle of a social interaction, which often happens with people with ADHD, they kind of check out for a while. And or is it they're not understanding what's going on around them? So they're struggling to make sense of all the different social dynamics and interactions. And what you have to remember, particularly at puberty, social dynamics with kids speed up. So often what you have to remember is kids are very fast in their social processing, and it gets even faster at puberty. And there's lots of gamanship, fun teasing, jocularity, sarcasm really cranks up as they get into middle school, especially. You can't say any word teaching a class that has anything to do with sex, because if you say it, they're all gonna be snickering and laughing. But for our kids in the spectrum, they often feel more comfortable with adults because adults will be slower paced with them. They're not going to tease them or make fun of them. And so we're more predictable that when they're with their peers, everything is going so fast. And I think the other piece we were talking about, is it ADHD or would it be autism or spectrum? One of the hallmarks for the kids with autism is they often don't really say hello to people. And the other one is they don't say goodbye, they just drift off. And everybody's, what happened to them? They were here a second ago and they don't practice those social graces. So I always like to talk with them about it. You gotta say hello and you need to say goodbye. Those are important skills. All right, unless you take your doctor hat off now and put on your mom hat, and you have three kids who are neurodiverse. Any thoughts for parents out there if they have a neurodiverse child or someone on the spectrum?

SPEAKER_03 37:20

I think your book says it pretty well. You can't beat yourself up about your parenting. It's really hard. Even when people use the word high functioning on a neurodiverse kid, the word high functioning, I think, has to be used very carefully. It might mean that the kid is verbally fluent, but for a parent, the word high functioning doesn't make sense because it means even though your kid can talk, they can talk back at you, they can not brush their teeth when you ask them, not get their socks on when you ask them, not get to their next activity when they need to, because transitioning is so hard in this population. As a mom, I have had to find other moms that get it. And as a professional, it's super hard to do so without running into my patients. Love you guys for listening, but I can't be your friend and your therapist. So it's really hard to find that community of people that get you and get what you're going through. I have found that incredibly difficult for myself. But when I do find the one or two really good friends that do have kids that are similar to mine, it's such a relief. It's a relief to go to their birthday parties, and if my kid has a meltdown, nobody judges me. Just those few friends in the world that kind of get you. It's critical. Taking time out for yourself is so important. Getting your nails done, getting your massage every so often, something because our kids are way harder than those of other parents. I also feel like there should be like a special mother's or father's day that's exacerbated for our population because we work like I feel like twice as hard as other parents to get our kids to do the same thing. So our job, I feel, is even harder. But overall, overall, is keeping your cool with your kids is so important. Showing interest in their interests and having special time set aside for them is key too. Because a lot of us parents who have to pay for all these services, and wonderful professionals have to work for business. And so finding time in our day to really appreciate their interests, even if their interests are really quirky or interests, just making an effort to show that you care about your kids' interests. One of my sons has a special interest in building and construction, and it's been really hard as a parent to navigate whether to let him use power tools. The kid wants to build a treehouse for her house. And he's eight years old. And so there's all these moments as a parent that you question your decision making where you're like, do I support the interest? Do I so what I decided to do instead is to find a safe way to let him do it. And I am signing him up for classes at Home Depot once a month when they build, and hoping that he'll learn some building techniques there that are safe. There's also the TAT program that's really cool. The Teaching the Autism Community Trade program. And I really like what they have to offer. I've been trying to get my kids into that, but it's been hard scheduling.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

So I just have young adults who start.

SPEAKER_03 41:01

And then there's Christ group.

ADHD vs Autism in Social Settings

SPEAKER_00 41:04

No, thank you. No, I was I was gonna share. I just had one of my young adults who's oh, I think he's 22 now, and he starts the tax program this fall in cybersecurity. And he'll do great at it. Because I think that kid was born with a computer in his hand, but it'll be awesome for him. And he loves computers, so it's a perfect fit. Yeah. What I really liked what you said is because statistically we know that parents with non-exceptional kids tend to isolate more than other parents, because it's hard when your kid's having a fit or a meltdown, and other parents are looking at you and you feel judged. And so you tend to avoid situations. And these kids really need the interaction. And so when you can find other parents with kids like yours, you have this built-in support group where your kids can get experience and you get a break and you get validation. You have other moms and dads to validate your experience and not being the only one that feels my kid's not making it. Everybody's judging me. So I think that's essential. Yeah. And take care of your take care of yourself. Yeah, yeah. Listen, we got this has been just delightful. Um two things I want to touch on quick, and because some of our parents might need your assistance, which is the legal consultation or being willing to testify now for our audience. I've always avoided that like the plague. I can't stand testifying. And the other attorney is always just doing anything they can to manipulate you and intimidate you. And so I've never wanted to do it, but I have so many parents who are struggling, especially getting resources from schools that they have an IEP for their child, but the school's not complying and they're not doing the services, and they need sometimes to take legal action. It sounds like you love that.

SPEAKER_03 43:02

Yeah, this is my favorite kind of work that I do. I really enjoy helping parents either get their kids out of trouble or get their kids the right help. I've also worked on cases where we have sued a big park like Disney to get them to be more inclusive. So, with regards to my forensic work, I see I have been on cases for individuals of all ages, from cases of really young kids where there has been a medical lawsuit. For example, a doctor who left subdermal electrodes in a patient's head and it caused further brain damage for someone with autism and seniors to somebody who's older getting in trouble for homicide or sexual assault. Sometimes, oftentimes, our people, our population is a bystander who's at the wrong place at the wrong time.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

They're not catching all.

SPEAKER_03 44:22

They don't realize that driving their friend to go commit a murder makes them a collaborator. And I keep seeing situations like this where oftentimes our folks don't have malicious intent. Sometimes they do, but uh I'd say 90% of the cases I've been in, it's not that it's that they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or in the sexual assault situation, is they were never taught the skills to make out with someone appropriately. So in one case, I had somebody touch someone in their sleep and they didn't realize that when someone's sleeping, it's actually they're not giving consent to be intimate. And so then they were charged with a sexual crime. And so we have to be really careful in our community. And one of my missions that I would really like to pursue, and I'm trying to seek some grant funding for, is to create a program to prevent people from getting involved in the criminal justice system. When our children with autism touch us on the butt or hug us without asking, as cute as it is, we have to start preparing them for life early and teaching them the right way to approach for things like that. When they get really loud in public and start cussing you out, if we can't start taming that behavior with us, how are we going to teach them for adulthood not to cuss out their boss or punch them in the face?

SPEAKER_00 45:57

I've a couple of my kids who there's all these comedians online that they follow and often very inappropriate content. But they're third graders, they see the guy laughing, they think it's funny, and then they go to school and they say the same thing. And it doesn't go over very but they're I thought that was funny. That's what they said on the show. So they don't really process what uh other people in the real world would think or feel about that, and and don't really understand who So for the boys, they hit puberty in middle school and they have those feelings, and oftentimes for some respectrum kids, they play with younger children, and then the next thing you know, they're having a seven-year-old female touch their penis. And to that, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

It's like the trip.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

And they don't really get that's really not okay, or how others would feel. I remember this young man, he had to go to a special class and they had to fill out a survey of what's appropriate behavior and inappropriate. And the one that he said would be okay is if is it okay to look through a naked window through her window? And he said, Yes, because she wouldn't know I'm there, but had no idea of how creepy that feels to people. He was just thinking, okay, I'm not in the room with her, and she doesn't know I'm there, so it's okay. And you're like, no, that's not okay.

SPEAKER_03 47:26

That's that's so funny. That's you're so right. And and the funny thing is in high schools now, right? A lot of guys think it's funny in some settings to go run around the hallways and touch, touch other guys' hit them in the butt or brother balls. And then some of them take it too far and they don't realize they're taking it too far, even to begin with, that behavior shouldn't be happening, but it because it's happening so it's become so normative for a lot of teens, our teens don't know when they've crossed a line. And it's not because they're trying to be malicious or assault anyone, it's because they just haven't been taught how to where that line is. And these are such subtle social skills, right?

SPEAKER_00 48:13

So basically, it really is a lunch of 10 ounces of prevention is worth several pounds of cure. And if you have a kid in the autism spectrum, is you really have to talk about things ahead of time. And I one kid in high school, and this was long before marijuana was passed here in Colorado, and one of the kids came up to him because the kid knew that they were bringing the police dogs out to search lockers. And he came up to one of my kids who's in the spectrum and he said, Hey, could you put this bag in your locker for me? He said, Sure. Of course, the dog found it. And he's got the pot in his locker and had no clue that was going on.

Parenting the Neurodiverse Child

SPEAKER_03 48:52

So there's so many of these. The other thing, Craig, that I find is that there's a lot of divorce in our population. I'm one of them and I'm open about that. And what I do as an expert witness oftentimes is if there's a kid with autism in the middle of a divorce situation, I help the parents figure out the best treatments the kid would need and who and who fit who can fit them into their schedules to make them happen. And so I often assist. I'm not a PRE or anything, I'm not a parental responsibilities evaluator. I don't decide which parent is better or anything like that, but I help both parents figure out next steps. What do we need? What do we need to make part of this plan? And I assist, or sometimes I critique PREs as well to help people understand what the kid will really need to benefit the child, not the each partner in the relationship.

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Sometimes the divorce rate for exceptional parents is higher. And what you have to remember is it's incredibly stressful. And oftentimes your partner has incredibly a different view of how things should be approached than you do. And then when you use your approach and it doesn't work, which many times for our kids in the spectrum, it might work once, but it may not work the next five times. Then the partners, hey that I knew that would work. We should be doing this, and then it just drives that wedge. And it's so we had a show a while back on the co-parenting. And really, you you need to break from things and you need to be able to communicate with your partner about how it's going in a non-threatening way where you're just not judging each other. It's just talking about how stressful this is. And if you can listen to your partner about that stress, it goes a long way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:36

Absolutely. Absolutely. And timeouts, just a couple, you need at least a date a week to without the kids, without the stress. And maybe where you're not even for part of the date, at least not allowed to talk about the kids' special needs. Because that that can also dominate your northern relationship.

SPEAKER_01 50:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:57

Yeah. And also sharing responsibilities is so important. I mean, I can't stress this enough as a mom. How important it is for both partners to split up some of the tasks as much as possible. It is stressful if one partner is at work during the day and gets to have lunches with colleagues and be having an active kind of brain with other adults, and the other one is focusing most of their energy, even if they're working as well, on the children and getting their needs met. It is a whole second job to find all the professionals that you need for your kid. It's like the amount of time it takes to fill out the paperwork, find the professionals, do get them to come to your home at the right time, schedule if you have multiple kids with special needs, schedule all their events and activities and specialists at times at different times and you can drive them or be there for all of them. It is so stressful. And I can relate both as a professional and as a mom to this that I think we just we need to find reliable professionals as well. Tiffany Feinfold does the guiding bright minds group. She's probably spoken in this at some point, but um, she's wonderful. And and that group actually vets the people that are on there, which is fantastic. That's helpful to find those communities of parents that and professionals that kind of get it.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

They're a great program. You mentioned them at the end. But yeah, and even it's the phone calls from school that your child is either sick and needs to get picked up, or they had a behavioral issue and they have to be sent home. And it's good for parents if you have a partner to divide up, like which days are you on call, or one's on call in the morning to go pick them up, one's on call in the afternoon. Sadly, probably 95% of those calls go to the mother. Probably even 90%. I would almost say 99.5% of the school just calls mom. But you might be in the middle of a session. And so it it's if you have a partner, it's being able to figure out okay, these are when you're on call, this is when I'm on call. And it's no different than our business. If you have to be on call, you're on call. That's a tough one. But Leela, this has just been delightful. I want to just tell our audience that and this would be a whole nother episode, but what's been really fun for me is to watch you develop your business. You really are an entrepreneur, and just keep growing and expanding, and your willingness to take Medicaid. I believe you take insurance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:37

Yeah, yeah. We're gonna start taking it pretty soon in Medicare.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

I've just been so impressed by what you've done with your business. It really is incredible. And it just keeps growing and expanding, which is just wonderful. I'm very happy for you in that regard. And hopefully in the not too distant future, I'll be heading the other direction. Okay, I'm done with this, but I still got to go to Dollar Launch for sure. But tell us your website so we can put that in the notes.

SPEAKER_03 54:10

Sure. It's www.kimmelk, P S Y C H dot com.kimelpsy.com.

SPEAKER_00 54:27

It's been lovely having you on. I'm gonna turn to things of beauty make me cry. You're welcome to hang on if you wish, or you have to go. I'm sure you're pretty busy. That's fine too. But it's just been a real joy, Leela. It really has. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. Because her name is spelled L-I-L-A. So for the longest time, I thought it was Leela. Yeah. And then I heard your name being pronounced Leela. And I'm like, wait a minute, who's that? Is that a different person? Oh, yeah, you thought it was Lila.

SPEAKER_03 54:58

Yeah, I know. I get that a lot because I'm South American. I'm from Argentina, so you pronounce that I as a lot of people.

Legal Systems, Schools & Advocacy

SPEAKER_00 55:06

That's beyond my scope of reasoning. But so I just want to share a couple of things. I've been very blessed the last couple months, especially in June. I was doing a lot of talks, and we had the Guided My Bright Minds Book Fair, Resource Fair with hundreds and hundreds of families. My wife and I, and a couple of my associates with our book tables filling books. And it was just so amazing. We had so many parents come up that introduced themselves and they thanked me for the years of service in the community. And I'm like, wow, I guess that's what you get when you get old. But it really was really just so gracious, the comments and the thanks. It really touched me deeply. My other experience a week later, I was at uh one of my former kids' wedding. And uh when her mother and I were talking, and the bride I remember when she was 15, and not a very pleasant 15-year-old who had lots of bursts of anger with her mother. And I can distinctly remember one session where her daughter just started going off on her, and I'm sitting in the middle, and I looked at the mom, and I'm thinking, what do I do? I've never seen anything like this in my life. But they hung on and she got married and has a great career. And her mother said to me, Both my husband and I are so thankful God brought us you into our lives. And man, that one got me. That was very special. And this last one that I was so touched by, I did a talk for the adopt domestic adoption camp out here in Estes Park, Colorado, where there are hundreds of parents, adoptive families, where the whole family comes for four days, and they have all these activities for the kids and lectures for the parents. And I was doing my talk about loan issues for kids who are adopted. Statistically, about 40 to 60 percent of adopted children have ADHD. So you see, it's quite frequent. And a mom came up to me at the book table and she said, What really are you talking about? You have to be creative and figure out your own things to help. And she said, My daughter and I, and this was just perfect because it got the core of attachment. And she said, My daughter and I, we do a redo dance anytime there's discord. And my daughter thought of it, and then she demonstrated it for me. She said, if we have a struggle, my daughter will say, Let's do a redo, or she'll say, Let's do a redo. And they dance around in the circle with their hands up and turn around and then give each other a high five and a hug, and then they start over and they move on from there. And I just was like, that is incredible. And her daughter thought of it, and it really touches on it for a child who's adopted, they really can struggle with being attached. And so when there's discord, it is quite frightening for them. And so they do the redo dance. And finally, I'll end with one that I just was crying as I watched the TV. I'm a bicycle geek. I just finished a big ride in Colorado on Saturday through the mountains that nearly about put me under, especially the defense. I'm not a good, I don't take risks anymore going downhill. But I watched the Tour de France every day. And this very famous banker, Mark Cavendish, who's now 39. The last three years, he had tied the record for the most stage wins in the Tour de France history over 110 years now, I think, at 35. He did that about four years ago, and he was trying to beat it, and then he would crash, and then he had a serious training injury, and they said his career was over. This year, uh, some smaller team picked him up to give him one more try. And he did it. And he won his 36th. But was the most special part was seeing him on stage with his five children, infant in elementary kid, and just seeing him being uh able to celebrate that with his wife and his kids was truly very special. I do find not everybody does, but I find a great deal of meaning in sports and competition and just seeing resiliency and seeing him do it was quite very special. So I want to thank our audience for tuning in today. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Check out Dr. Kimmel's website, and until we visit again, remember to just relax. You only have to be this side of good enough as a parent, and your kids will be fine. Thank you.