March is Developmental Disability Awareness Month, so we are joined in this episode by Samara Cole-Doyon to talk about disability in childhood. She was an early childhood educator and is now a children's book author and the mother to a child with disabilities. She shares about her experience raising a son with a disability and what that means for her family, as well as her ideas on how policymakers and professionals of all kinds could work to better support & include families like hers.

Resources mentioned in the episode:

• Samara's website
• Danny with Words (Danny Whitty: nonspeaking Autistic writer and advocate)
• Fidgets and Fries (Tiffany Hammond: Autistic parent, advocate, and writer)
• Nigh Functioning Autism (Tiffany Modeste: Autistic parent and advocate)
• Autistic, Typing (Jules Edwards: Indigenous, Autistic advocate)
• Hvppy Hands (nonbinary, Autistic parent of Autistic kids)
• For the Love of Gabe (Nicole Gottesmann, her partner, and her nonspeaking, Autistic son)

This podcast is a production of the Maine Association for the Education of Young Children (MaineAEYC), a registered nonprofit. Learn more about MaineAEYC: https://maineaeyc.org/. This podcast is hosted, recorded, produced, and edited by Kailina Mills.