WPTF Afternoon News
Dr. Sam Brandsen on TheraFriends and the Impact of Compassion in Neurodiversity Awareness
A chapel he'll father hopeful more compassion is in the air following a heartwarming moment between another father and his son last week during the Democratic National Commission in Chicago. Last week, my presidential nominee, Tim Walz, shouted out to his son Gus and the moment that resulted has been felt by Americans across the country. Gus Walz overcome by emotion could be seen saying, that's my dad. That's my dad. Dr. Sam Branson is someone who can relate to that moment in many different ways. He has a son, Johan, who has autism and is neurodivergent and he joins us now. Dr. Branson, how are you? I am well. Thank you so much for having me join. Not bad at all. So first of all, what is your background with a child diagnosed with autism and neurodivergence? Yeah. So I guess even before my child was diagnosed, I had a little bit of familiarity with autism just because I'm autistic myself. But it really wasn't until he was diagnosed, when he was 18 months, and I started thinking about it. Much more in depth, I just thought what a wonderful title he was and how he had such a unique way of expressing himself. For example, if he was happy, he would sometimes flap his arms and he had just all these creative ways of letting us know what he was feeling or thinking. And I just wanted to learn as much as I could about him and how to provide him with a good environment. So at the time, I was actually finishing my PhD in physics, but I was spending most of my free time just thinking about my child parenting him and trying to learn about autism and neurodiversity and ended up taking such an interest in that that I, after graduating, I switched fields and just started working on autism and neurodiversity, full plan. Yeah, and someone who grew up with autism and studying it, was there something that you learned and didn't know that you wound up discovering about that? Yeah, I guess I've learned so much to be honest. I guess I've realized how diverse autistic people are. I certainly have my own set of experiences and my son has his set of experiences as well. But each person, even though there's a lot of similarities and a lot that we have in common, each person has unique challenges and strengths and barriers. And so it's been very neat to be able to learn more about that. And to, I guess, come up with some simple accommodations that hopefully can make life easier for autistic people. What is a misconception that the Pumblegaz, a whole, has about people with learning disorders, autism and neurodivergence? I think there's a few. I do think that there's more understanding about neurodivergence recently, which is wonderful to see. But I think one assumption is that people with learning disabilities or who are neurodivergence might not have a lot of empathy, whereas in reality, I think that oftentimes there's a great deal of empathy. And we actually see that with Gus, with his expression of care towards his father. It just might be expressed in a little bit of a different way. And sometimes I think in a very genuine way. I think sometimes we can also unintentionally undervalue the unique types of intelligence that people have. For example, someone might struggle with something that a lot of people would consider to be pretty simple. But that doesn't mean that they don't have a lot of gifts in another area. And so I think that can be kind of neat for people to learn about. And he had just trying to treat each person as if they're unique. And even if you know a few people who are autistic, if you meet a different person, they might have a completely different set of needs. So trying to learn from each person and just be what they have to offer. How critical and what were you feeling at that moment when you saw Gus Walls shouting out, that's my dad last week as Tim Walls was speaking? Yeah, it was. I thought it was a really neat moment. I didn't realize that he was neurodivergent person. I still thought it was a pretty cool moment just because you don't often see children, especially older children, expressing care towards their parents in such a direct and openly. So I thought that was pretty cool. And then once I realized that he was neurodivergent, I thought it was also quite neat that this moment seems to kind of catalyze a discussion of neurodiversity and hopefully a little bit more understanding around it as well. And I think it does show just the difference in emotional expression and communication that neurodivergent people can often have. You're with a group called Theraphrens. Theraphrens and that's a T-H-E-R-A friends. What do you do day to day to help people with learning disorders? Yeah. So Theraphrens is a local nonprofit and they started a few years ago to just try and create a more accessible community. So they do a few different things. They do some community education. But we also started offering – I'm not a clinician, so I'm not offering this directly, but I'm on the board of Theraphrens and they do have clinicians recently started offering neurodiversity affirming practice. So they have speech therapy, occupational therapy, different social opportunities, recreational opportunities, and we also do some caregiver support as well. And I think what makes Theraphrens sort of unique is that personally there's a very significant commitment to making these services as affordable as possible. So I'm not making sure that hopefully everyone has access to these regardless of the financial situation. And they also are very committed to trying to learn from people who are neurodivergent and people who have disabilities. So people with disabilities are those who are neurodivergent aren't just clients or patients, but also are involved in shaping what opportunities are available or what therapies are. And I think that's quite wonderful. Yeah. And it's wonderful that you do that from day to day. You feel what Tim Wallace has felt like and his wife have felt for years and years. So Dr. Sam Bradson from Theraphrens, thank you so much for joining us here today. We appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you very much for your time.