Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World

Meet Dr. Theresa Haskins: The Mom Who Rewrote the Rulebook on Autism

• Tony Mantor

Share episode

Send us a text

Dr. Theresa Haskins shares her journey from a mother seeking answers for her autistic son to becoming an educator and researcher dedicated to creating more inclusive systems for neurodivergent individuals. 

Her experiences navigating medical dismissals, educational barriers, and workplace challenges illuminate how society needs to fundamentally shift its approach to neurodiversity.

• Mother of a "thrice exceptional" son (autistic, ADHD, and gifted) who could count to 100 at age two but wasn't speaking conversationally
• Left special education program after realizing conventional teaching approaches didn't align with her son's needs
• Pursued educational psychology and doctorate degrees to understand how to change systems, not just help individuals adapt
• Advocates for autonomous learning and choice-making rather than taking away agency from neurodivergent individuals
• Challenges organizations to focus on meeting people's needs without requiring them to "prove" their disability
• Questions arbitrary job requirements that create barriers for neurodivergent talent
• Emphasizes that different developmental paths aren't lesser ones – just different
• Works with universities, government agencies, and organizations to implement neurodiversity-affirming practices
• Promotes universal design principles that benefit everyone, not just those with disabilities
• Believes we need to value diverse skills and stop measuring everyone against neurotypical milestones

You and your family matter. You exist, you deserve to thrive, you deserve education, you deserve gainful employment, you deserve respect, and that's what we work towards.


https://tonymantor.com
https://Facebook.com/tonymantor
https://instagram.com/tonymantor
https://twitter.com/tonymantor
https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic
intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild
Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)

Speaker 1:

Welcome to why Not Me, the World podcast, hosted by Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, usa, nashville, tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry. Their stories Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry. Real life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. Hopefully, you gain more awareness, acceptance and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantour. Welcome to why Not Me, the World. Joining us today is Teresa Haskins, an educator, researcher and, notably, a mother with an autistic child. Her journey began seeking answers, which led to providing those answers by immersing herself in learning. This led to her teaching others how to help themselves find success and achieve their full potential in a more diverse, inclusive and equitable world. It's a pleasure to have her on to share her expertise with us. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1:

If you would, let's just tell people what you do and how you got there.

Speaker 2:

So currently there's a lot of things going on. I have a multitude of roles. I'm a professor at the University of Southern California, I teach graduate studies in human resource management and I work there to really push a neurodiversity lens to help future leaders really try to get a better sense of how to be more accommodating and as part of the university then I started to see some of the issues in higher education, where I work with faculty so that they're more inclusive and how they're designing their learning and working with students. But all of this actually came about almost well. It's 18 years ago.

Speaker 2:

Today I do consulting and up until recently I was working with a lot of government agencies on how to build more neuro-inclusive teams and we were really making a lot of government agencies on how to build more neuroinclusive teams and we were really making a lot of headway in that space and I believe that traction will stick, regardless of current sentiment. But it all started with my son. When you have your first child, or any children, you have visions of what life will be. My son was a surprise, so you know his first year of development seemed fairly typical until we started to get into the social components that you would start to anticipate your child to engage in.

Speaker 1:

What were some of the things that you noticed he wasn't doing that you thought he should have been doing?

Speaker 2:

So he didn't wave and he didn't say hello or goodbye or any of those things. And as he was pushing towards two, he could speak. And I always like to qualify that, that when I say my son didn't talk, he didn't talk reciprocally, but he could speak. So he could count to 100. He knew his ABCs, but he didn't say hello or goodbye. So you know there's definitely something going on there.

Speaker 2:

And so you talk to the pediatrician and they're like, don't worry about it, kids develop differently. I'm like, yeah, but this is different, different, right, he's not meeting some of those benchmarks that we have in the developmental checklist. So they, you know, they send them to audiologists. They check their hearing, they check their eyesight, like they're looking for some physical problem, until they come to the conclusion there's no physical problem. And that leads you to meeting with psychiatrists.

Speaker 2:

And in our case, our son is thrice exceptional. People say twice exceptional but he actually is autistic, pdd-nos by the DSM-IV, he's ADHD and he's gifted. He has an IQ of about 150. So that would explain why he was able to read and write by the age of three, but he still wasn't talking conversationally. So when you have this extremely bright but a typically developing child, you start to think about how is this going to work?

Speaker 2:

And so, like many parents because this was before I was Dr Haskins, I didn't even have my master's yet. At the time I was just a mom and my husband was just a dad and we were just trying to get through life right and so we have this amazing little boy that's just doing all these really cool things that nobody pays attention to. You know, we talked about how he could count to 100. And you know, he was a little bit like the WB frog, so if you brought him somewhere and asked him to do something he wouldn't perform. So then it's the parents saying these things happen and they're like oh, that's probably just seculalia, he's probably just repeating you, you're training him to do this stuff. I was not training my son to do anything.

Speaker 1:

That must have been really frustrating to deal with when you know what you know as a mother. So how did you handle it?

Speaker 2:

So you're met with all this disbelief and it was really, really aggravating, but they're little and you figure they'll develop in time. And you also. As a society, we believe that doctors and psychiatrists and teachers know things. We want to have belief that when they're telling us stuff it's true, and so when they're telling you that your son can't do this or your daughter can't do that or whatever you're being told this week, you believe them.

Speaker 2:

The great news is that I have eyes and ears in my own brain and I could hear what they were saying and I knew what I lived and I knew what they were saying and I knew what I lived and I knew what I was doing and I knew they were wrong. I thought I'd go back to school and become a special educator and I only spent six months in that program, one semester I guess. So that's a little less than six months and my first class. I mean everything was fine, but what they were teaching was just wrong. I just knew it was wrong, because it was like hearing the same rhetoric that I was hearing with doctors and psychologists of do these things. And I knew those things weren't right. And so I raised my hand and I said hey, who comes up with this stuff? And that isn't quite how I said it, but I'll be nice on your podcast and the professor said easy, educational psychologists do.

Speaker 2:

He goes. You know, to be a special educator you have to use evidence-based methodologies. You can't just make things up and I go, somebody's making this stuff up? And I go who does that? And he goes educational psychologists. I go, how do I become one of them? So I dropped out of that program and I rolled in a master's program and I got my degree in educational psychology. Around the same time my son would get close to school age, so we would go through that rigmarole because at that point in time I still thought my kid would go to school. I went to school, you probably went to school. I don't know anything about homeschooling. I'm not an educator at this time.

Speaker 1:

With all this happening, what was your next plan of action?

Speaker 2:

So he goes for intelligence testing and after three days they stopped the testing because they could have went further, but by state standards, high enough. He gets like an IQ of 152 or something like that and they're like that's high enough for our purposes. He was testing in eighth grade math. He's five years old and so we're sitting there. He should be entering kindergarten and we have like the first grade and the second grade and the third grade people all sitting around the table and the principal and the educational psychologist are like we hear what you're saying about his intelligence, but based on his social deficits, he really should be in kindergarten because we want him to develop with his peers. And then you could look at the teachers going. What are we going to teach? Like, what are we going to do with him all day? You know, like he was already reading to. He was like in a developmental preschool class to get some socialization and he would read to the other kids. He was four.

Speaker 2:

So my husband and I left that and I'm like this isn't going to work and so we were like I guess we'll have to homeschool him. So my husband got the hard job. He actually had to do the homeschooling of the homeschooling and I continue to like do my studies and get my degrees and try to figure out how to do this stuff. Granted, like my story is not a homeschooling story, but my story is there was no system to support us, there were no answers, there were no resources, no one really knew what to do. You know, when I asked, well, could he come to school? You know, maybe start in first or second grade socially and then maybe go to the high school to take some physics classes? And like we can't have a five-year-old in the high school, like the system's not built for a child like that. And so we exited the system and I started studying and testing my theories. So everything I did with my son, I started to research.

Speaker 1:

With all the emotions going on the ups and downs, researching seemed to be a good thing. Where did that path of research?

Speaker 2:

lead you. I tested choice-making and autonomous learning, because one of the first things we do to autistic children is take away all sense of choice. Having a set schedule is different than taking away autonomy and choice, and what I found in my life is that, whether it's a disabled person, a child, an elderly person, a disengaged person, first thing we do is take away choice and start to micromanage them and we take away all their identity and sense of self and we stop listening and we start becoming extremely prescriptive and it's horribly dangerous. I knew my son would be educated because I could handle that and I've been in corporate America and working with entities I hate to admit it, tony, pushing three decades now and I knew that, what I was doing with him and how he was developing. But then I would be sitting in board meetings and talent discussions and like, even if I get my son educated, what's going to happen next? Because, based on the people I'm talking with, no one's ever going to hire him. So that's when I went to get my doctorate and I'm like now I got to figure out how we change systems, how do we change organizations. So I went from how do we educate these individuals, create more inclusive classrooms, create more pathways, opportunities, differentiated instruction and self-directed learning. And then that pivoted to how do we create more accessible skills-based which is ironic because that's a word being used right now, but most of our interview protocol and talent assessment is based on extroverted engagement, meaning how we communicate.

Speaker 2:

Whether you tell a good story you could be getting a job in accounting, tony and they'll judge you on how you answer that question right. So somebody like me I know I've rambled for a bit they're expecting that two-minute answer. I give you a 20-minute answer, right? And so the neurodivergency starts coming out. So I've really been working with organizations about really thinking about. When you say you want the best talent, how are you defining that, who are you really including and how are you judging it? And you know, 100, 200 years ago, introversion was king. It was the quiet, methodological person that was the most valued, and now it's extroversion and charisma. As those tides shift, how do we make sure we're bringing everybody along?

Speaker 1:

That's a great question. What are you implementing to try and, hopefully, change some of this?

Speaker 2:

The things I do. I educate future leaders, I develop programs for autistic individuals and their families to try to figure out their own pathways, because there is no set path. One of the things I tell parents all the time is people want a box solution. There is no box solution. It's not the answer you want. If we're going to believe that autism is a spectrum I know you've had people tell you that, that there's no two people with autism alike If you believe that, then you know there's no box solution and so it's really being malleable. And that's why I don't have some 10 method pathway of success, because I can't tell a lie and it just wouldn't be true. I really work organically with leaders and parents and organizations to understand how would it work here, because your path to success at this university will be different than your path to success at this government entity. Don't want to say any other names because I want them to continue the good work that those paths are going to be very unique to you, just like the individuals you're trying to.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, when you meet someone for the first time, you're trying to explain to them what you just explained to me. How do you get that across? There's this big mystery in some people's minds on what autism is. For example, when I first started my podcast, I knew nothing about autism Zero. Now, a year and a half later, I've gathered enough information where I can understand what people are saying. I can follow along A lot of people out there. When you mention autism, they think Rain man, which is so far from the truth. So how do you try to create that bridge? So the gap between the known and unknown is a little bit better for those that don't understand autism.

Speaker 2:

How do you bridge that? So it's an interesting thing, tony, because if you met me 10 years ago, we would spend a lot of time. I would spend a lot of matter how I try to explain autism to you. You will start to develop a caricature and scheme of that individual. It may be true sometimes, but it may not be true all the time. So instead and this happened last year I was doing a thing and they're like but how do I know if they have autism or ADHD? So I know I should support them and I've been trying to unpack that in.

Speaker 2:

Are you willing to support people and meet them where they are? Would you be willing to work with somebody who communicates differently? Would you be willing to work with people that need directions in writing? Would you be willing to give people extra time on a test? Does it really matter why they need it More? So does somebody have to have a documented disability for you to want to meet them where they are? Tony, I mean, being short is not a documented disability, but I can assure you I am completely disabled at the Home Depot when I want something on the top shelf.

Speaker 2:

So what I've really been working with leaders is stop worrying about my son's disability or my deficits or somebody with ADHDs. Ask people what they need to be successful. Assess what you're doing. That could create roadblocks. If I have sensory processing issues, I'll tell you that I need a quiet work environment. Be willing to give me that quiet work environment. If I tell you that people walking into my office is distracting, then respect that and give me a door to close or maybe let me work from home.

Speaker 2:

What I find is that the accommodations view, the ADA view of reasonable accommodation, puts this. It's an othering where it's like well, if I think less of you because you need help, then I'll give you the support you need. And where that neurodiversity movement is coming in and where I like work with professors and leaders is saying if somebody tells you they need something, believe them. And, more importantly, why wouldn't you give people the supports they need to succeed and I'm really trying to take it away from prove to me you have a problem, so I will help you and get it to. Why wouldn't we help anybody?

Speaker 2:

One of the biggest things I see, tony, which is why I work more with leaders and educational institutions and not individuals, is I'm frankly tired of the autistic community being asked to change in some way and, in essence, be less disabled to succeed. We don't ask blind people to be less blind. We don't try to give them training on how to navigate to pretend they're less blind. And if we actually believe that autism is a neurological difference I know there's people that want to debate whether it's a disability or not but our society creates conditions that are disabling. And if we believe that to be true, then we can't ask autistic people to try to be less autistic.

Speaker 1:

That's a great point. How do we move forward from that?

Speaker 2:

I think it's great there are a lot of people that help autistic people self-advocate. Obviously, I want my son to have the skills to be able to ask for what he needs, but it is not on him or me to install elevators and ramps in a building, right, and so the onus really is on the other side and the other side doesn't have to understand autism, right. You don't have to understand cerebral palsy, you don't have to understand all the different conditions that can result in somebody being blind and deaf to understand that there's a need there that needs to be accommodated. So I've been really trying to get people to don't overly worry whether or not somebody has ADHD or autism, because I did have a CEO who goes. But how do I know? If they're really ADHD? I go, does it matter? What about if they're just a typical person that's introverted and focuses better in a quiet room, create, and so that's where that concept of universal design comes from. That's where this concept of neurodiversity comes from, and I think that, especially when we're in an environment where people are charged about, everything should be fair and equal.

Speaker 2:

Then let's do that. Let's create accessible organizations, let's create the lifts and ramps of the autism community, because we know what those structures are from a generalized perspective and if we incorporate more skill based assessments, less dependency on your ability to churn a catchy phrase like I didn't know, tony, that every person applying for a job had to be a marketing expert. Right, how they craft a resume. Come on, if you can take a course to get a job. They're not hiring you for your skills, they're hiring you for a clip, and that's just not right. So that's what I've really been trying to work Like if you're hiring an accountant, why do they have to have great communication skills? What are you actually asking that accountant to do?

Speaker 2:

That's why I think, especially on the autism side, when we saw autism at work and all those initiatives, that's why it was in the tech space, because those were the leaders that were the first to say you're right, they don't have to be great communicators. You're right, I'm not really looking at their ability to make friends, I need them to code or I need them to do technical work, and that's why we've seen so much more traction on that side, because we could get leaders to get it. And so that's how I help leaders come along.

Speaker 2:

I actually try to shut down the medical model of conversation and, by the way, in most countries you're not even really permitted to ask those questions Like if it was a medical diagnosis. They're not supposed to ask about your cancer diagnosis. So we have to be very careful about, well, how does your autism manifest? None of your business, but I do need a quiet workspace. I do need you to follow up with meeting notes, and having an agenda before the meeting would be helpful too. When you say it that way, the things I just asked for aren't even unreasonable.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, when I spoke with Temple Grandin she said give me a pilot's checklist, I'll get it done.

Speaker 2:

That's it and I'll be honest. Tony and anybody listening, look at a job requisition. And how much is that somebody's perception of the skills you need to do the job? Because that's probably the skills they have. And can you tell me, based on that job, if you actually know what your job was going to be Like? They'll say, oh, I need you to be able to chop onions and I need you to be able to saute In the job requisition does it actually tell you what type of food you're going to cook?

Speaker 2:

Because that's going to tell you a lot more. Like McDonald's and Gordon Ramsay all hire cooks. What they're cooking and the skill level involved is quite different, but their job requisitions would probably not read that differently, and that's the problem. So I tell people, if you want innovation and you want creativity, of course we want to promote the autistic side of the house, but the truth is is you have to open up pathways for different skills to execute, and so I do exercises with leaders. That's like if you had a multitude of different animals and you're like whoever can climb the tree gets the job. Well, the monkey birds could get pests out, but how you write that requisition and how you look at talent is going to determine who you would even consider. And if you're myopic in terms of, oh, you have to look like Tony and Teresa and you have to work the way we do to be successful, you're not even going to consider the other talent. So I challenge everybody look at what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

And if you're like, oh, they have to have three to five years of experience because you know I teach human resources and I always challenge those future talent acquisition people to say what is it that you think is happening in that three to five years which is why you're giving that number and they're like well, I mean, if you've had x amount of years of experience, then you've probably had challenges, I go. So you're making an assumption. Why don't you just say I'm hiring an accountant and I want to know that you've been through five audits. I want to know that you've had to like work with a client. Like what is it that that experience is supposed to encompass? Because you could have somebody that works 10 years and has never had that problem and you could have somebody that got the short straw as the accountant and in their first three years went through 10 audits, right.

Speaker 2:

Of course, that might also imply they're not a good accountant in the first place. That's what we're trying to unpack with talent, and I just don't think people get it. And the same thing happens for all those that are like oh, the education side. Same thing happens with college entry my son has as a high school student, because he's not officially a college student, but he's been at the local college since he was 14 years old. He has 52 credit hours. He has a 4.0 in, like the most advanced math classes they have, but to get full entry he still had to take his SAT, you mean the test that predicts whether or not he could have taken the 52 credit hours in the 4.0 he has. And so it's these systems that are designed to try to ensure equity, but there's no thinking behind them anymore.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, I've said that. In the neurotypical world, let alone the neurodiverse, to me it just makes no sense.

Speaker 2:

We're just not thinking.

Speaker 1:

I agree.

Speaker 2:

And I don't know if it's because you know we created rules to ensure safety. But then at what point do we start to lose sight of the evaluation of that safety net?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly yeah. What is very important to you? That you need to let our listeners know about the journey in what you do.

Speaker 2:

The most important thing people need to know is that there is not a typical line of development, especially in autism. It's in a typical development, but that doesn't mean an incomplete development. It's in a typical development, but that doesn't mean an incomplete development. And so what people need to understand is and people say it, but I don't think they really appreciate what it means Different doesn't mean less. A perfect example is because the majority does develop in a more synchronous pattern, a more linear pattern that has, like mainstreamed. It's very hard to accept and acknowledge deviations of development from that pattern. So a perfect example is my son, at five or six, was reading and writing and doing math at like middle school levels, couldn't tie his shoes, he had other, you know, physical limitations that other children at that age would have mastered right, like self-care and potting and things like that. You fast forward and now we're 16, 17, 18, 19 years old and they're driving and dating and doing all these things.

Speaker 2:

Okay, a lot of autistic individuals with a typical development especially if they're, you know, gifted and twice exceptional they're not driving at 18. They're socially awkward and probably not playing sports because their interests are somewhere else. And so when you meet with people because it's our typical society. They're like well, what do you want to do when you grow up and what sports do you play? And are you driving? Yet Because that's what they know.

Speaker 2:

And so when all of your questions are no, they're like, oh God, that must be horrible. Well, is your child taking senior level college classes? Have they done an internship at NASA? Like I could ask questions that you would say no to too. And so I don't think my son is better than others who haven't had those achievements, and other people's children are not better because they have achievements he hasn't had. I think the world, just the way humans are, we create measuring sticks of competitiveness, and if you're not playing sports, then you're not manly enough, and if you're not driving or you don't have a job, yeah, it's sad we have to compare like that.

Speaker 1:

Like you said, everyone's different.

Speaker 2:

That's the typical measuring stick and this would be like every autistic parent out there will tell you this I praise you for your kids achievements and I acknowledge those typical milestones and I think it's great. Don't diminish my child, because our milestones are different and don't dismiss them. Tony, I can't tell you how often I sit in conversations and people talk about oh, they're going to the prom and they're going to high school Although my son did go to a dance but they're going to prom and they're going to high school and they're doing all these things and they're driving and they got the first job working at Wendy's. That's great, that's great for them. I'm happy. And they're getting into college and they're going to move away Good. So then I share my stuff and it's like it didn't happen because it's not on their checklist and they'll actually be like, oh my God, do you think I'll ever drive? Did you just hear he did an internship? Did you just hear he did an internship?

Speaker 2:

Parents of autistic children I see you and your achievements are just as valid. I think that's what everybody needs to understand. It's weird, tony. I've been saying this to educators for a long time. I don't like K-12 education. They expect these children, all children to be like the jack of all trades, of everything K-12. And then there's this magical thing that happens you get into adulthood and you get to actually choose what you're good at and hang out with the people you want to hang out with and pursue the hobbies of interest to you and all of a sudden everybody starts thriving because plumbers become plumbers and engineers hang out with engineers and musicians go with musicians. I think we need to start that earlier. I don't know why there's like this weird turning.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree a hundred percent.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah, you wouldn't hang like you're a musician. You've been doing it for years. It's not because you can't appreciate other fields, but you're probably not hanging out with them.

Speaker 1:

When I was a sophomore in high school, I was taking geometry. What am I taking this for? I want to be a musician. I totally get what you're saying here. A hundred percent.

Speaker 2:

And if we want to teach some uniform stuff, teach kids that they have to pay taxes and how to file them like how to balance a checkbook. There are some practical things we don't teach.

Speaker 1:

Exactly.

Speaker 2:

At all. And then there's other things where it's like, oh, we've decided. I think that was my parents' generation we all supposed to go to college for some reason. And then people came out the other side saying did I have to go to college? So if anybody could take anything away is we have got to stop pitting ourselves against each other, because the truth is is we all can't be good at the same things and, by the way, if we all had the same interests and the same talents, the world wouldn't work.

Speaker 1:

It'd be boring too.

Speaker 2:

Like we need everybody and we need to stop diminishing like. I know Danny talked about this. We need to stop diminishing the trades. We need trades just as much as we need doctors and we need to just value people more, Value humans and stop trying to measure everybody against yourself, because we're not in competition with you.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. This has been a really good conversation. I appreciate you coming on my show.

Speaker 2:

I'm really glad to be here. One thing I just want to leave everybody with is there's a lot of things going on in the world right now, but you and your family matter, and there are plenty of us out here, like Tony, that are going to keep listening. We're going to keep working because you exist, you deserve to thrive, you deserve education, you deserve gainful employment, you deserve respect, and that's what I work towards. And that's what I work towards and that's what we're going to keep doing.

Speaker 1:

That's great, that's great. Well, this has been good, very, very informative.

Speaker 2:

Tony, there's a lot of work to be done and I'm glad to be part of a not quiet but small army. That'll be one of the things as you continue on this journey. It is a small consortium of people in this space.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you were so correct there. Again, I really appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 2:

Really nice to meet you Well, I will thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to tonymantorcom. Send them to TonyMantorcom Contact then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask tell everyone everywhere about why Not Me, the World, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world.