The Shit Nobody Says Out Loud: Real Talk on Life, Systems & Survival

The behavior went down. The chart looks better. Fewer office referrals. Less refusal. The kid is staying in class.

Great.

But did we actually help the kid?

Because getting a kid to stop doing something and figuring out why they were doing it in the first place are not the same thing. And sometimes they look exactly the same in the data.

This is me talking through behavior, the stories adults start telling about kids, what happens when “refused task” turns into “defiant” or “unmotivated,” and why I keep coming back to one question:

What actually changed for the kid?

I hear some version of “that’s just how it works” all the time.

Schools. State agencies. Child welfare systems. Different people, different organizations, different situations, but somehow the same explanation keeps showing up.

And lately I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to confuse something happening all the time with that thing actually being normal.

In this episode, I’m talking about the dysfunction we get used to seeing, the parents who start apologizing for asking questions, the kids stuck waiting while adults figure out whose responsibility something is, and why seeing the same problem over and over should probably make us ask more questions, not fewer.

Common means it happens a lot.

That doesn’t automatically mean it’s okay.

I keep thinking about Band-Aids.

I love what I do. I love when I can help a parent finally understand what’s happening, get an answer they’ve been trying to get, or get a kid something they actually need. Those wins matter.

But then the phone rings again. Different parent. Different kid. Different district. Somehow, way too often, the same damn problem.

In this episode, I’m talking through something I’ve been struggling with lately: what it feels like to keep helping one family at a time while realizing how many of the problems showing up at my door aren’t really individual problems at all.

You absolutely put the Band-Aid on when someone is bleeding.

I’m just not sure I’m okay spending the rest of my life handing out Band-Aids.

Grief doesn't follow a neat timeline, and it certainly doesn't make sense. From getting wrecked out of nowhere at a wall of training bras to the realization that there's no age where you stop wanting your mom, Jess shares an unfiltered look at the randomness, humor, and quiet weight of losing a parent.

Knowing a lot about something professionally is a pain in the ass when it's your own kid and you still have no fucking clue what to do. In this episode, Jess breaks down the exhausting mental loop of overthinking every decision, desperately needing a therapist to tell her "Am I fucking this up?", and the reality that parenting doesn't come with an answer key.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I was a parent with a kid struggling at school, trusting the people who knew the system because I didn’t.

Then I found an educational advocate. She sat down next to me and made it make sense.

This is where my advocacy story started, why “Am I crazy?” became such a familiar question, and why I care so much about helping other parents understand the process and know what questions they can ask.