Life Skills - Langley Mom Creates a Guide Inspired by Her Son

Inspired by her son, a Langley mom creates a book to help people with cognitive delays navigate daily life. 

 

TRANSCRIPT

Evan:

Welcome back to DDA. Is encouraging abilities podcast. I am your host. DDA, communications, manager, manager, Evan Kelly joining me in the studio, which is, of course, is always a nice change over the phone. Is Stevie artemenko, am I getting your name?

Stevie:

Very, very close. Yeah. Artemenko, artemeco, close.

Evan:

Stevie is a local mom who has three children, each with some various health issues. She also works as a special education assistant. Is a writer and an advocate for the disability community. On the writer's side, she has produced a book to help with cognitive issues. Plan, sorry, to help people with cognitive issues plan and organize their days and develop life skills as they get older. It's called Life Skills, checks, checklists and guidance to help navigate everyday life. It is available on Amazon. So Stevie, thanks for joining me today.

Stevie:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here for sure. So I always start these off with my guests telling a little bit more about themselves your local so let's start there. Well before becoming a mom, I did a lot of traveling. I love travel, and then I worked in radio as a copywriter and doing voiceovers. And one of the radio stations that I worked at, I was a creative director, and I got shut down. Everyone got laid off. And so, yeah, yeah. And so I thought, What do I want to do? What's something I really want to do? And one of my bucket list things was to go work for a nonprofit overseas. So I ended up working for an organization called Crossroads, and I ended up in Fiji as a teacher, and I had no background in teaching. Didn't know what I was doing. It was like, here's your class, they don't speak your language, and that was how it started. But thankfully, I had a wonderful roommate teacher who helped me.

Evan:

So what were you teaching? Then, everything, everything, Science, Math, English as a second language?

Stevie:

Well, basically, I mean, when it came down to me, what I was teaching, I was just teaching basically English and some math. It was a grade three class, but it was quite funny, because clearly there was a language barrier, and the kids would just be like, Yes, miss, Yes, miss, and half the time, I don't think they understood anything I was saying.

Evan:

So what do they teach in Fiji? Or not teach? What are they? What's the language in Fiji? It's Fijian. Fijian. It's its own language. Yeah, Pardon my ignorance.

 

 

Stevie:

No, no, that's okay. Um, so, yeah, so, and I only picked up a little bit of the language and but it was amazing. So that totally inspired me to come back and want to work with kids. And, you know, radio is really fun and great and all that. But it wasn't, you know, kind of inspiring me. And so I decided to go back to school to become a special education assistant, and that's where it kind of all started. And then, yeah, after my youngest son was born with all his special needs, then I quit all my jobs to focus on him.

Evan:

Yeah, right, right. So tell me a little bit about your youngest son then.

Stevie:

So I have three kids, and they all have health challenges. So my oldest is 24 and he's about to become a dad himself, which is really strange and surreal. Very happy for the first time. Grandma for you. Yes, yes. I was still like grandma. I like Nana better, but he had various health issues. He when he was a teenager, he was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition and a blood clotting disorder, so major surgeries, and it was really hard on him as a teenager and the family, and then my daughter, who's 23 was diagnosed with celiac a few years ago, so she's trying to navigate that, but she's on the road to becoming a registered holistic nutritionist, which is exciting, yeah. And then my son, Caden, who was the inspiration for this book, he was born at 25 weeks, at one and a half pounds. That's small, yeah. So he was considered an extreme preemie. He had major infections and very, very, very sick baby. So he was in the hospital in the NICU for about six months at Children's and Lions Gate.

Evan:

Can I ask you a little bit about that? Because, because that sort of aligns with my own life. I have an identical twin brother, okay? And we were born two months premature back in 1971 right? And so we were three pounds when we were born and given a 50, 5050, chance survival, yep. And it's, it's interesting, because my mom was a child psychologist at the time. And my father was a, well, he was a GP, but he was also, I don't know if he was a psychiatrist at that time, but he ended up finishing as a psychiatrist. And back in 1970 they Firstly, they didn't know my mom was carry