Interview of George Bailey, President of ZPods

Anne Zachry 0:00 Welcome to "Making Special Education Actually Work," an online publication presented in blog in podcast form by KPS4Parents. As an added benefit to our subscribers and visitors to our site, we're making podcast versions of our text-only blog articles so that you can get the information you need on the go by downloading and listening at your convenience. We also occasionally conduct discussions with guest speakers via our podcast and transcribe the audio into text for our followers who prefer to read the content on our blog. Where the use of visual aids legal citations and references to other websites are used to better illustrate our points and help you understand the information, these tools appear in the text-only portion of the blog post of which this podcast is a part. You will hear a distinctive sound [bell sound] during this podcast whenever reference is made to content that includes a link to another article, website, or download. Please refer back to the original blog article to access these resources.

 

Anne Zachry 0:58 Today is March 31 2022. This post in podcast is titled, "Interview of George Bailey, president of ZPods." In this podcast, which was originally recorded on March 23 2022, George and I discuss the impact of sleep disorders and related conditions that interfere with children's access to education and the research being done into his company's sleep solutions for children with autism, sensory integration disorders, insomnia, anxiety, and other disorders that can negatively impact their sleep quality.

 

George Bailey 1:29 Hi, I'm George Bailey, and I'm president of ZPods. We're a startup in St. Louis, and we are developing sensory-friendly beds for autistic children and others who have severe sleep problems that are caused by sensory issues. So, our goal is to help out as many of these kids as possible. We enjoy it … and, uh, yeah.

 

Anne Zachry 1:54 That's very cool. And I know that when I was emailing with you guys back and forth, when we were coordinating all of this, you know, my first question was what kind of peer reviewed research do you have behind what you're doing? Are you doing any kind of studies? And, I understand that, not only are you … because you were just telling me that you've got a regional center here in California that's already funded your product for one of its consumers, and they're not going to just jump on something unless there's evidence to back it up. But I know that you guys are also participating in some evidence … some studies and whatnot to collect the hard data that speaks to not just whether or not it's effective, but what makes it effective. How is it effective? And what is the science that underpins what it is that you're doing? And so I was hoping to get more information about that from you guys, in terms of what's … what's the research currently being done on the efficacy of your solution?

 

George Bailey 2:44 It's such a good question. And, you know, I was just telling somebody earlier that one of the reasons why it took us a while to get around to really focusing on autism … we were thinking about, like, you know, "Where we should go?" … is because when people would tell us, you know, look at autism, early on, as we were trying to find an application for sleep pods that were great. We were bringing it from China, I balked at it. I'm a father of five. And I have two kids on the spectrum. And I thought like, "Ah, come on guys," … like, parents of autistic children get all sorts of stuff.

 

Anne Zachry 3:19 Oh, yeah, for sure.

 

George Bailey 3:20 … business. Yeah. I don't want business on playing on people's hopes and stuff like that. And so I, initially when I approached him, and said, "Okay, I want to take this serious, because we're getting that feedback that says we should do this." But I started talking to experts, and with parents of autistic children, and interacting with autistic children of my own. And the feedback was a resounding, "Please try it." And I think that … so, I'm going to answer your question two parts: I think that there's an intuitive evidence and I think that there's going to be actual evidence and the intuitive of evidence is kind of based on all of our collective experience.

 

Anne Zachry 3:59 Right, the anecdotal data. Yeah.

 

George Bailey 4:00 Yeah, yeah. There's some heavy anecdotal evidence that's seems to say, like, these children really value … they have the same needs as if … in that there's, kind of, like, one type.

 

Anne Zachry 4:11 Right. There's no monoliths, but, yeah, kids with similar needs. Yeah.

 

George Bailey 4:15 Yeah. These kids tend to love sleeping in the closet, under the bed, up against the wall, and … there's something that's like it. And there was enough there for us to see, so there was something