Show Notes:
Help for special needs families in divorce! Learn practical strategies for managing stress, maintaining your emotional well-being, and providing the best possible support for your child!

Are you a parent of a special needs child facing divorce? Tonya has a powerful conversation about special needs families in divorce with Mary Ann Hughes, a certified special needs divorce coach and expert.

In this episode, Mary Ann shares invaluable insights and practical advice on navigating the unique challenges of special needs families in divorce. Discover how to:

• Prioritize your child’s well-being: Learn strategies to protect your child’s emotional and developmental needs during this difficult time.
• Advocate effectively: Understand how to use your advocacy skills to ensure your child receives the support they need.
• Manage stress and emotional challenges: Discover practical tips for coping with the emotional toll of divorce and maintaining your own well-being.
• Build a positive co-parenting relationship: Learn strategies for effective co-parenting and minimizing conflict after divorce.
• Create a brighter future: Discover how to rebuild your life, maintain important relationships, and create a positive environment for your child.

Don’t miss this informative and empowering episode!

(** The information contained in this interview is not legal advice and is for entertainment purposes only. **)

#divorcehelp #divorcetips #specialneedsdivorce

Connect with Mary Ann:

• 💻Website: https://www.specialfamilytransitions.com/
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@SpecialFamilyTransitions
• Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/specialfamilytransitions
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/specialfamilytransitions/
• YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@specialfamilytransitions
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mary-ann-hughes-special-family-transitions
• Video on Social Stories to Explain Divorce: https://youtu.be/wQtGlyZwCUI
• Mini-course: Keys to Success in Divorce for Moms of Children with Special Needs: https://bit.ly/DivorceTipsForMoms

🌟Check out the NEW Water Prairie Prayer Journal for Parents! https://amzn.to/3TDBIO5

• ** As an Amazon Associate, I may earn on qualifying purchases. **

Check out this interview with Todd and Kristen Evans on how to strengthen your marriage: https://youtu.be/UwPWwM5FHE0

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Music Used:

“LazyDay” by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Artist: http://audionautix.com/

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Episode #109: Strategies for Special Needs Families in Divorce

Help for special needs families in divorce! Learn practical strategies for managing stress, maintaining your emotional well-being, and providing the best possible support for your child!

(Recorded April 30, 2024)

Full Transcript of Interview:

Mary Ann: So just know that, um, no matter what, you’ll be okay and your kids will be okay, and you’re not alone.

Tonya: Let’s face it, raising a child with special needs is an incredible journey, but it can also put a strain on even the strongest relationships. And when divorce enters the picture, those challenges can feel insurmountable.

Welcome to the Water Prairie Chronicles, a podcast for special needs parents. I’m your host, Tonya Wollum, and I’m glad you’re here. In this episode, I’m joined by Mary Ann Hughes, the owner of Special Family Transitions, who will share her expertise and personal experiences to help you navigate the emotional and logistical hurdles of divorce while ensuring the well being of your child with special needs.

The information contained in this interview is not legal advice and is for entertainment purposes only.

Mary Ann, welcome to Water Prairie.

Thank you, Tonya. So happy to be here today.

When you and I first started communicating on a possible topic, it was one that I realized, I think, I think yours was the one that, that, that came in that made me think, you know, we’re really hitting some hot topics this year.

We’ve had, um, Well, we’ve talked about grief, we’ve talked about loss, we’ve talked about some hard decisions that parents have to make. And because our target audience are special needs families, they’re already facing tough decisions daily with having to juggle medical appointments and schooling and just all the questions that come along, no matter what your child’s diagnosis may be.

And today we’re adding one more of those tough conversations, but I’m really excited that we’re able to dig deeper this year. And add some, some content that people may not normally want to talk about. It it’s, it’s not easy. It’s not easy and the best of situations. And before we go in too far, I did want to reference for any of our listeners that.

If you’re in a situation, if this, if the title of this got your attention, because you’re considering divorce or because you’re in the, in the throes of divorce right now, um, we’ve got some, some information coming that’s, that’s going to hopefully help guide you a little bit here. And Mary Ann is bringing in a wealth of expertise that’s going to be able to, to help give you some good information as we go and resources for you to follow up on afterwards.

But if you are not to that point yet. We have had a conversation with Todd and Kristen Evans about just how tough it is on the relationship on the marriage relationship when you have special needs children. So I’m going to link their. I’m going to be doing an interview here as well, and I’d encourage you to listen to that one and see if maybe you can get some pointers there to help strengthen your marriage.

If you’re not to, to this point yet, but that being said, Mary Ann, I really appreciate you coming in and being willing to be vulnerable with me today to, to talk about this and to help us give some hope and some strength to the path that some of our families may be following right now. So, thank you.

Thank you so much for the opportunity. Like you said, this is my passion, my calling now. I personally have been through a divorce, I have a mom of two children, now young adults on the opposite end of the autism spectrum. And so I personally have been through this and I know what it takes and how hard it can be and all those things you mentioned at the beginning, at their introduction, the loss, the grief, medical decisions, all that comes into play.

When you’re facing with a divorce and having to think about how to plan for you and for your kid’s future. So, and definitely I totally support, um, trying to work on your marriage if you can, but sometimes it’s beyond that point. So I’m here to support people when they are thinking about it or going through it or even afterwards.

There’s no right decision for anybody. Every. Situation is different. Every divorce is different. And what your life looks like after divorce is different too. But what influences that is how you handle yourself and the whole situation during divorce. That’s why it’s really important to come at this in a way where you’re thinking about the longterm, thinking about things strategically so that you and your child and even your ex can hopefully.

Have a good future going forward.

But I want to point out too, that this is a judgment free conversation. Listeners, no one is sitting here saying you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have gotten yourself to this point. We, we are not coming, coming from that approach at all. So you should feel safe here.

And we want you to be able to, to gain information and to feel stronger by the time you finish listening to our conversation. If, if, if, if we’re doing, doing this, right. So, so to start out with. I thought we’d look a little bit at just the reality of what some of some of our families may be facing right now.

When we have special needs children, we worry about a lot of things. We worry about, as we mentioned before, their education, just their friendships, their inclusion and things. But, If we’re facing a relationship that is having a rough road, we’re also going to be worried about how that’s going to impact our children, our children who are walking in that and that typical path, but even more so our children with special needs.

So can you share some of the most common challenges that parents face during a special needs divorce and how those differ from a typical divorce?

Sure. It’s a great question. And so the first part of that is how do you share that information or break the news to your child that’s happening or in the process of happening.

I would suggest that They do receive advanced notice. I know sometimes one spouse may be caught off guard and so there is no advanced notice and and That, that happens a lot. And, but if you can, if you both work together and decide that divorce is going to be the best option for you, the marriage is not working out and that’s the decision you decide to go, then we want to kind of break that news slowly.

And sometimes when I reference a child, I’m referring to a neurodiverse kind of child. I might, like I said, my kid has autism, so I’m kind of taking that as an example, but it can work with children of any kind of ability or, or special challenge. And so, um. So if we can do this slowly, you know, we don’t want one parent, um, to be gone all of a sudden without any notice, we want to try to work to that, right?

Because that’s, that’s the hardest thing is one day they’re there and one day there’s not and there’s no explanation. So ideally, if they know it’s coming, you can have kind of build up to that and, and speak to them on their level. And one way I found that worked for my family is, um, to develop a social story.

So a lot of your districts may be familiar with social stories, have used them. At school or for Vacations or upcoming changes in routine. And so that’s the way that I introduced my kids at the time. I still call them kids. They’re now in their early twenties, but at the time they were a little bit younger and, um, I had to explain to them what was happening in a way that they can understand and try to make sense of it.

And so I did in a very positive fashion so that they knew that they’re still loved, but that’s a big concern for any kind of child, right? Any kind of divorce is they want to make sure that We don’t want them to feel responsible or that they had any reason behind that. Right. I mean, granted there’s a high rate of divorce among families that have a child with some kind of special need, but it’s not because of the child.

It’s because of the parents and issues related to that. So having said that, um, we want to make sure that. We present this in a way that they know that they’re loved. Both parents still love them and that things are just going to look different. We want to try to explain what those things are, right?

Here’s my, you know, we’re going to say, you say you’re living, you know, the home, say where your mom still lives. And if you have, um, if dad has a new place, we want to try to get pictures of that place. Ideally before the kids go there for the first time. So they know kind of what to expect, what that might look like.

If they have, uh, Um, a room there, what the room might look like, if maybe they can help decorate that room and make it feel like their home away from home. And it is that their home when they’re with the other parent. So we want to remember that, um, you know, a child, you know, is close hopefully to both parents and feels like they’re half mom and half dad.

So we don’t ever want to speak negatively about one parent because then the. The child may internalize that. So, um, so I had, so I created a social story, which is very helpful. I did get pictures and I kind of talked about what the routine, as much as I knew what that would look like. So they want to know what’s going to happen.

When am I with mom, when am I with dad? Am I going to be at the same school? Am I going to have my same friends? They want to know the basic things that we care about, kind of the, um, yeah. You know, Maslow’s higher care needs. What are, you know, basic shelter, food and clothing. Why am I going to have what I need as a child?

And then the other things you can work on as well. But I developed a social story and they shared it at school with them and the teachers who want to involve teachers and community as well. So whether it’s teachers, therapists, other people that are close to them to kind of help reinforce. And support them through this process.

So we don’t want to do this in a vacuum where there’s a whole community takes a village. Um, so we want to, to, you know, rely on people who are there for us, maybe to step in for us or to support us as we’re going through this change. And one of the reasons I created the social story, I tried to get help for my kids, and it was really hot, hard to find a mental health professional.

Comfortable and knowledgeable about how to share this information with a child who’s not very maybe communicative or has behavior issues. And so I try all different ways. And finally, somebody said to me, you know, Mary Ann, what do you do? When you have a change, and there is a change for your kids that you have to explain.

And that’s one way back to the social story, which I’ve used when I went on vacation to try to prepare them so that the change wouldn’t be as scary. They knew what to expect. So it’s kind of same thing, I guess, in this scenario,

I like, I like the idea of using the social story and our kids who are on the spectrum, a lot of times have used social stories, but even kids who aren’t,

and may not have used the social story before, parents, that is a great tool that you can use with my kids. We used that type of thing before we had a major move. And, um, and even when my daughter, who’s, who’s the oldest, when we moved her out of the crib into the toddler bed, we had a story for her because it was, it was a major transition for her.

There was security in that bed and it was, you know, It was a big one for her. So, um, so I, I, I think that that’s a great practical idea for, for any of our parents. So even if you aren’t familiar with it, um, We can, we can put some resources in the notes for you too, if you, if you don’t know how to, how to put that together.

Um, one thing I was thinking too, is that we’re talking about parents who have been advocating for their children everywhere up to this point. So, most of our parents should have pretty strong advocacy skills going into, to this and, and hopefully it’s not a major conflict. It’s, it’s an amicable. Situation, but it isn’t always.

So how can those skills be used effectively to advocate for the child’s needs? If it’s a high conflict divorce.

I love that question because that what that is, that was my mission and my divorce to advocate for my kids. And that’s why I teach my clients and that’s how I’m seeing it kind of sets me apart.

Is that obviously is kind of my biggest, um, strong point and what I stress to the parents I work with. So, so as you mentioned, as you, as a parent, you’re advocating for their school, for their therapies, whatever they might need in life. And so you’re doing the same thing in a divorce. And so whether it’s high conflict or even an amicable one, you want to try to think about what is, what are the child’s needs?

Don’t think just about right now, but think about what it would be in the long term. So say your child is 5, I know it’s hard to think about when they’re 15 and 25, but as much as you can, think about what they might need, where they might be in school, if they’re in a private program, how much that might cost, what are the therapies that they need, what is it that they need now, and then some things that they might need in the future, because we want to look at that as a whole and try to, if we can, put a cost to that, too.

Thanks. And how much of our time and what kind of other resources are needed so that when we’re talking about divorce and, and, you know, divorce, there’s a lot to it, right? A lot of emotion, but at the end of the day, it’s a legal and financial transaction. I hate to say it like that. It sounds kind of cold, but that’s what it ends up being.

We want to make it as positive an experience as we can, but at the day, that’s what. Um, the courts are going to want and judges and lawyers or how are we going to split up what we have and how are we going to support our kids, um, for the child’s best interest. And so it all works together. So we want to by putting the child 1st and their needs and what they’re going to need now and in the future and make a plan for that.

That’s going to hopefully, um, reduce some of the conflict in other areas in the divorce discussions and help you together plan for what that might look like for the child so that you can come to agreements in divorce. You can agree on what child support might look like. You can agree on what other types of supports, um, are going to be available.

What kind of decision making it be? What kind of. Possession schedule, uh, is best for that child. Not because somebody says I want 50, 50, but really what’s in the best interest of that child, where are they going to, um, you know, get the support they need on a day to day basis, not that both parents can’t, you know, provide, uh, play an important role in that.

But, um, depending on what’s been happening in the past and maybe make a plan for the future, we want to think about all those kinds of things.

But I like that, that you pointed out that our goal is what’s best for the child. That’s in all of our advocacy, it’s not. What rights do we have, but what’s best for the child.

And it’s not always going to look the same from family to family. So I think that’s, that’s, that’s a good point there. So you’ve, you’ve described some of this already, but just thinking through and, and as I’m coming in, I haven’t personally experienced this, but I have watched it happen with many friends and family as well.

And it’s, it’s never easy. It’s always overwhelming. Um, And I’m thinking even more so when you’re dealing with one or more children who have extra needs that are part of that. So what are some strategies that parents can take on to help manage that emotional side of it all?

Sure. Well, first of all, you have to manage your own emotions.

Right, you can’t take care of your children if you’re not in a good place to do that. So part of the advocacy and part of the self care, which is a big component of this as well, is, as I was saying, you can’t pour from an empty cup. So you have to be in a good place, um, to make good decisions in your divorce and taking care of the kids.

So if you’re stressed and worry about the divorce and what life is going to look like, that’s going to, You’re rebuffing your kids, right? During their, when they’re with you, because um, taking care of kids with special needs and abilities is a, can be a full time job in itself, but so is a divorce, right?

If you’re in the, in the heat and thick of it. And so you want to be able to, um, kind of differentiate those and, and hopefully have divorce have discussions when the kids aren’t home, right, listening to that, because they can hear everything we’re saying, even if they don’t speak or they’re not verbal, they can understand, they sense the stress we’re under and the tones and so on.

So we want to try to shield the kids as much as we can from that. Um, so if you can, um, you know, talk about social stories, but if you can find someone to support them, a mental health professional, if you’re able to do that, that’s for yourself and for your kids, that’s great. Um, there’s things you can do to help with the transition, having maybe set schedules, having a calendar that you can refer to.

Um, sometimes instead of calling it, you know, X number of days with mom and dad, call it we’re going to have number X number of sleeps, right? Three sleeps at mom’s until we go to dad’s and two sleeps at dad’s or whatever that might be. So make it a level that they can understand and you want to have, give them an opportunity to express themselves as well.

They’re going through a lot of, changes and maybe confusion, understanding kind of what’s happening. So we want to make sure that we hear them and what they have to share and their concerns and try to address them as best we can. Um, once I call, I did a project once about this whole, this whole area. And the psychologist said, we’ll have a special play time for the kids.

No matter what age they are, they, they need time with that, with that parent, with each parent, hopefully, um, to just have some relaxed time, no rules and let them. This whatever happens happens during that time, right? If they want to have the lead in a game or an activity or a discussion, then we want to Um, you know, respect that time.

The other thing I wanted to ask about are, cause you’ve, you’ve walked with, with other families through this. So you have reference points that I don’t have, and I’m sure you’ve seen some positive and some negatives and without disclosing anything personal of what you’ve seen specifically, are there some missteps that parents can avoid through this process that, that you’ve seen that maybe you have some advice on being able to help them maybe navigate around those. Those steps, does that make any sense?

Sure, for sure. Yeah, there’s a lot of things that people do that maybe aren’t the best choice. Um, and so as an example, um, when people think of divorce, sometimes the first thing they think to do is to go run out.

And when you’re in a frame of mind where you’re not thinking rationally and not thinking about the good of everybody, you may not choose either the right attorney or the right kind of situation or the right kind of strategy to go forward. Um, what I would suggest is maybe before you make any drastic decisions or quickly come to a decision, then maybe seek out somebody who can help you think through kind of what’s happening to you, whether it’s a mental health professional or a divorce coach.

So I’m a, now a certified special needs divorce coach. So that means is, uh, that’s my specialty and I can help people kind of think about all the things that they, they need to. Consider as they’re, as they’re going forward. And so, you know, you want to think about what’s important to you and what’s going to be important in your future and sort of thinking about those things and maybe pull all the other things together as well, you know, documents and start having conversations about what you want life to look like for you and for your child before you get to an attorney.

And so that way, when you meet with an attorney, you’ll have a. Um, you can ex share better your perspective and then have them kind of take your lead as opposed to you taking their lead.

Would you recommend that, because I’m, I’m assuming that the first time that meet with, that you meet with an attorney, you’re going by yourself. Would you recommend that they take a friend or someone with them as another set of ears?

You could. I mean, a lot of, um, lawyers will offer consultations sometimes for a fee, sometimes for free. And so, yeah, it definitely, um, helps to take somebody if you can, um, to be kind of an impartial person and maybe share things that maybe you forget to say, or if you’ve talked obviously ahead of time, you kind of maybe have written down and have thought through some of these things.

So, yeah, lawyers are there to help you and they provide the legal structure and the strategies and ways. to support you and advocate for you. Um, but you also want to make sure that you’re working with an attorney who understands special needs divorce considerations. There’s a lot who don’t. They say they’ve maybe had some here and there.

Really what’s important in a divorce involving a child with any kind of disability is making sure that you’re finding attorney and other professionals as well on your team who understand what it takes to be successful, what that child needs, and what you’re going to need. As part of that process, and so there’s a lot of things that I won’t go into a whole lot of detail here, but financially, you’ve got to set things up so that your child is not at risk of losing or not being eligible either now or in the future for government benefits, for instance, so you have to have somebody that understands that and that language and working with people who can protect you, help protect you and your child through the process.

We’ve had conversations in the past about some of those benefits. We have some others this season coming on. So parents, if that’s new to you, look back on those because that is an important piece of planning on your child’s future. And we’re talking about planning that far in advance. In this, in this situation, the other thing, as I’m thinking through, like, because the reason I ask about the question of whether you would take someone with you or not, I’m just thinking about how emotionally vulnerable you might be at that moment and, and just like going into a diagnosis in a doctor’s office, sometimes you’re not going to think of everything that you need to ask or that you want to ask.

So in a second, for me, I would probably, Okay. Need somebody there to kind of help either that or have a whole list of on paper that I have to follow of all of my, my, my checkpoints that I wanted to talk through. But thinking that on that same route, same line of thought, um, sometimes I know that going through your, you’re so focused on within the family at the time and all these other things that are going on to help walk through the process of the divorce, that You might isolate a little bit from from your normal support group.

That’s there Do you have any tips for parents on how to maintain those networks? Excuse me while they’re going through and after the divorce.

Right. Yeah. So like you said, this is a very emotionally difficult time, and we’re not thinking at our best. And so that’s part of what I do is go for help you go from the emotional side of divorce to like the, to the business side, how to make better decisions in divorce.

So definitely that’s what I’m here to do, but you know, we can’t, we can’t do it alone. We need our support community. Whether it’s our church, and even then there may not, you know, may or may not be people there who understand and support you and can help you through that process. Um, there’s divorce support groups, uh, there’s online Facebook and online groups that, that can offer a lot of support and insights for people who have been through it as well.

There’s in person communities, so yeah, definitely, um, I’m happy to share suggestions, but there’s, yeah, definitely find a group that you can connect with. Whether it’s in person or online, because yeah, they’re going to be there, support you, encourage you, and maybe share things that maybe you didn’t think about, um, as well, you need to ask for or be doing a plan for, for your kids.

This season, I’ve been asking each of my guests to pass on some advice to our listeners through a series of open ended statements. And. Marian and I’ve talked about this. She’s agreed to, to participate in this. So I have four for you if you’re up for that many. Um, so I’m going to read the statement and then I’m going to have you repeat the statement and finish it.

However, you feel led to finish it. So the first one that I have for you is every parent of a special needs child going through a divorce should know that.

Every parent going through a divorce, uh, should know that, We need to think about not just the short term, but the long term. We talked a little bit about that, um, but we need to think about how those will be addressed.

How is it going to affect all the family members and what we can do, um, to make it as amicable a process as possible. that we can, but yes, think of what they call a life care plan for that child. Some people want to think that, you know, divorce is over, child support ends at 18, and then that we’re done.

Well, that’s not really the case because, uh, depending on your state, um, you may have, uh, child support that goes longer than that. There’s, even if you don’t, and some states have indefinite meaning lifelong child support, but even if you don’t, you can still come to an agreement. Um, based on what’s for that child and your family, what’s going to work out.

So hopefully you can plan together and work together to make that happen.

All right. So when a special needs child is involved in a divorce, the most important thing to remember is?

I say the most important thing is to take things slowly. We don’t want to rush ourselves or rush our kids through this and force things upon anybody when they’re not ready.

Um, so. And so, yeah, we talked about how transitioning is hard. So we want to help find ways to help our kids transition, whether it’s through social stories. And by the way, I mentioned earlier, I did create a YouTube video about that. So happy to link that to your resources. That’s how to do that in this divorce situation.

Um, but yeah, so, you know, find ways to give structure to this so that, um, the kids don’t feel like they’re alone or that there’s. That they don’t have anyone to turn to, that there’s ways that we’re all going to get through this together and life will be okay afterwards.

All right. So the third one, the best way to minimize the impact of divorce on a child with special needs is to

The way to minimize the impact is to think about the child first.

We talked a little bit about that. So we want to be as child centered as we can a divorce. We don’t want this to be situation where it’s a win lose or I get my way and you’re going to suffer. And there’s a lot of emotion behind divorce, a lot of reasons for divorce. And so we want to think though, think strategically in all this, what are, what are the effects of decisions and things that we say and do, uh, in the short term, as well as our future relationship.

And how this divorce is going to end up. So there’s, um, there’s a system out there is a person who asked about high conflict earlier. There’s a person from the high conflict Institute has a communication system called BIFF, B I F F. So it stands for brief, informative, friendly, and firm. So we don’t want to get so wrapped up in emotion that we’re just yelling and going on and on and not, um, saying things succinctly, professionally.

Um, so that the other side, uh, also feels respected and heard. So we want to, uh, make sure that everyone, um, shares what they need to share, but do it in a way that is going to promote the discussion and the result that you’re trying to get.

All right. So the final one, no matter how difficult things seem, parents going through a special needs divorce should never give up on.

We never want to give up on your child or on yourself or on your future. All right. So, you know, child may be having a hard time or you may feel like you need to advocate for what your kid is going through or needs. So there’s a lot of times when the parents have different view of the child’s disability and the severity and what that may mean for them.

Uh, sometimes it’s, you know, like you said about the grief, they’re still in the grief cycle and not fully accepting that child’s diagnosis. And so we want to show really, uh, how that, that disability is impacting the child and how we can help that child to get what they need and be, and reach the best of their ability that they can, and so as a, as a parent advocating for a child in divorce, we want to show, uh, the services they need, the people they need, and what those things might cost to effectively advocate, but we want to also look at ourselves and remember that divorce is a finite process.

Some people think it’s, you know, you’re done with divorce and you’re done. Well, yeah, it will end one day. So it may seem like it takes forever. Some, some divorces do take years if there’s a lot of contention involved, but one day it will end and we want to think about our life after divorce. What’s it going to be?

What’s your next step? What new opportunities await for you. And so we want to have that kind of as a guiding light in our divorce. Not to say divorce is the end and things are going to be terrible, but no, we want to get beyond that. And it takes time to heal and get over the emotion of it. And they, some people say it takes up to three years really to fully, um, heal and, and move on.

But, but no, there is an end point in, in your life after divorce can even be better than it was, um, as you’re going through it, even, even more better than you can imagine. I mean, I’m a different person than I was when During my marriage and during my divorce. And so I’m here now, learn from it. And I’m now able to help other people see the opportunities that lay ahead of them as well.

Well said advice there. I appreciate you sharing all of that with us. So before we go, I want to give you a chance to, you mentioned that you are a coach, but tell us more about what you do, what your business is and how they can get in touch with you.

Sure. So, so when I went through my divorce, it took quite a bit of time, quite a bit of money, and quite a bit of emotional stress. And so with the incidence of divorce as high as it is for special needs families, I thought it’s kind of silly for everyone to have to recreate the wheel and go through what I went through. And so I decided, okay, well, I’m going to help other people based on what I’ve learned.

I’m going to take certifications away to do to be effective. Effectively help other people. So I started my company called Special Family Transitions, and I’m now, um, a Certified Special Needs Divorce Coach. So what that means is I’ve gone through the Certified Divorce Coach program, and there’s an extra certification.

That’s a special needs one that I actually help inspire and create as well. So now I’m so glad that there are people out there who understand, who, um, can Connect you with other resources and can actually help, um. Educate and share things with your, the rest of the other members of your team that may or may not be familiar with what we need to do to become successful on a special needs divorce of lots of other certifications to, I even became a mediator recently and a parent coordinator, because I think there’s lots of opportunities for parents to work together.

So as a divorce coach, I have to, uh, pretty much working with one parent to help them advocate and help them support them through the process. But in my other roles, I can have work together with both parents. Um, so say it’s a more amicable situation, like you said, there’s some that are more high conflict and need more help and some where like, okay, this is what we want to do.

Let’s work together to get there. And so I can help facilitate that as well.

I like, I like that option too. And, um, it’d be nice if all families could go through mediation and not have the conflict, but I know reality is sometimes that, that isn’t possible, but, um, but it’s gotta be rewarding to be able to be in that, in that role.

For sure. And I’m also educating other mediators about that other, you know, that those ways to get through the situation didn’t have to be a high conflict situation. Um, you know, once again, it’s about the child’s needs and how can we work on that together? And so, yeah, I’m active. I share information on social media.

Um, and I, uh, also work one on one with, with, with families and also even create a little mini course about how to have success in a special needs divorce. So I’m here no matter what your needs are, I’m here to support you and connect you with resources as well. You asked if I support other people just to share information.

It definitely either reach out to me on social media. Or happy to do a complimentary consultation, let you learn about your situation and share about maybe how I can help as well.

And on social media, which platforms are you on and is your, um, tag Special Family Transitions?

Yes, exactly. I’m Special Family Transitions on all the platforms.

I’m on Facebook is where I’m most active, but I’m also on Instagram. Uh, on YouTube, I have a YouTube channel and I’m even on Tik TOK as well. So yeah, whatever your style is, reach out to me either way. And so, um, yeah, the easiest way probably is to go to my website, which is, uh, www.specialfamilytransitions.com. And over there they can find a contact form, send me an email. And there’s also links to my social media channels there.

Okay. Good. So we’ll, we’ll link your website and, um, your Facebook link and then also your, your YouTube channel because you had mentioned the social stories there. So Mary Ann, thank you for spending the time with me on this.

I have a better understanding now of what families may need to be thinking through.

Sure. Thank you so much, Tonya. I appreciate the opportunity. So just know that, um, no matter what, you’ll be okay and your kids will be okay. And you’re not alone.

I appreciate Mary Ann sharing her knowledge with us today.

If you know of a family facing a possible divorce, please consider sharing this video with them and look for ways you can help support their family. No one wants to go through a divorce, and if you’re in a relationship that can be salvaged, I highly recommend that you check out my interview with Todd and Kristen Evans, and get the support you need to work on strengthening your marriage.

Thanks for joining me today. I’ll see you next time.