Crady Schneider and the Memphis Mom Collective
By Crady Schneider
Crady is a native Memphian, but she left for twelve years only to return at the end of June 2016. She is wife to Brad, who is a pediatrician in the ER at LeBonheur. Together, they have three children: Cooper, Semmes, and Katherine Cobb. Cooper is nonverbal, non-ambulatory, and g-tube fed. He was diagnosed soon after birth with a random chromosomal abnormality.
Crady Schneider and her family
Crady is co-owner of the Memphis Mom Collective, a local parenting website. She lives with her family in Red Acres, where she spends her days wrangling children and trying to limit screen time. She loves vacations, book clubs, dinners with friends, and a hoppy IPA at the end of the day. She hates kids’ TV shows, people who park in handicap spots when they aren’t handicapped, and tomatoes.
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Crady's Key Takeaway from Episode 32 on the Raising Kellan Podcast:
I think what I want people to know is that a disability is diversity. It's not something that can be fixed. It's just who they are, a part of them that they're born with.
Crady's blog links to Memphis Mom Collective focused on Raising Cooper?
Blog links:
https://memphis.momcollective.com/emotions/breathe-breathe-let-go/
https://memphis.momcollective.com/special-needs/life-of-a-handicap-mom-mom-guilt/
https://memphis.momcollective.com/special-needs/handicap-halloween/
During the Episode 32, we discussed the Katie Beckett Waiver implementation for The State of Tennessee. If you are parent of a child with special needs that is awaiting this Waiver please contact your legislator to get feedback on the initiation of the program.
Transcript
Marsh Naidoo (00:24):
Welcome to episode number 32 of the Raising Killen podcast. The podcast to motivate, inspire, and educate parents, raising kids with special needs. I am your host, Marsh Naidoo. And today I'm joined by Schneider. Schneider is co-owner of Memphis Mom's Collective. She has three amazing kids, Cooper, her eldest has a chromosome abnormality global delay. He is nonverbal as well as non-ambulatory. She, she's passionate about advocating for children with special needs. Welcome to the show Crady.
Crady Schneider (01:08):
Thank you for having me.
Marsh Naidoo (01:10):
You are a native Memphian. I would like to ask you a quick top three, your favorite barbecue.
Crady Schneider (01:19):
I prefer BBQ Shop in Midtown on Madison.
Marsh Naidoo (01:23):
All right. Best coffee shop.
Crady Schneider (01:27):
Oh probably Ugly Mug. My kids call it the blue Starbucks cuz it has a drive through <laugh>, so yeah.
Marsh Naidoo (01:38):
What about best outdoor experience or trail or park?
Crady Schneider (01:45):
We really like the hiking trails that you can access by the BMX bike trail down by Shelby Farms. If you turn in by the BMX trails and turn right and go all the way down to the Shelby Farm or the Walnut Grove Humphreys Bridge, there's trail access in there and it runs along the Wolf River and it's really, there's a big giant loop you can do and it's gorgeous and my kids are obsessed with it. It's got a lot of hills. We'll push Cooper and the stroller and he'll go down the hills and laugh and it's just a really fun trail system.
Marsh Naidoo (02:23):
All right Katie, I know everyone is curious, obviously I've got the heads up because I looked at your guys' website, Memphis Mom's Collective. Yes. But just kind of give us a rundown about what you guys actually do.
Crady Schneider (02:38):
There's a team of 30 writers and we publish three to five new blog posts per week discussing a whole variety of local issues of just in motherhood in general. Funny stories, sad stories, kind of runs the gamut. And then we also put on community events. We are obviously not doing as many of those due to Covid. We had to cancel some and move some, but normally we do, we're pretty consistent with having events almost on a monthly basis. We do a charity event, we do a single mom spa and shop event in December for any single mom to come to. We have childcare if they get to shop for their kids for Christmas and then they get a whole spa day. They get coffee and cookies and their nails done and makeup done and all kinds of fun activities for them. That might be my favorite event you do. Plus we just do kind of play dates.
Marsh Naidoo (03:37):
That is totally amazing Crady. And especially now with some of us like homeschooling. It's providing a social getaway so to speak, and a way to connect with moms. And alright, now you have your plate full with three kids and I am very curious. Give us some idea of what your typical day is like.
Crady Schneider (04:03):
Well luckily two of my kids are currently in school in person. Cooper goes to the Shrine School, which is a Shelby County School. So he is doing virtual school, but the other two do go to school. My youngest goes three days a week, so I don't know, we take him to school and come home and then Cooper gets on his device and then I work with him in the mornings and then try and schedule in my own work at some point during those hours and then pick the kids up. Most of the kids have extracurricular stuff so Cooper gets to go to a lot of tennis clinics and listen to a lot of piano lessons and at some point I make dinner and put the kids to bed. <laugh>, I dunno, it's just you do what you gotta do to get these kids alive and healthy and happy and fed and cleaned, <laugh>.
(05:04):
So I feel like I expect a lot of my middle son, he's seven in the second grade and so he helps do breakfast in the morning and he helps bring me stuff that I need for Cooper. He helps, he can bathe him, he can shower himself, which is a whole milestone that I never even knew I needed. And so he is just, he's, I don't know, I expect a lot more of him I think than a lot of parents of, I mean we've been doing this for years. He's been helping me make breakfast since he was four or five and he can get out the milk and get out the cereal and get out the bowls and get out the spoons and he'll do that while I'm feeding Cooper and he'll feed himself and his sister and just as soon as he could do it, he was just expected that he would help. So my now four-year-old is not far behind. She's gonna have to start taking on more teamwork. She feeds the dog now. Just see
Marsh Naidoo (06:04):
That was something I was very it's just Kellan that I'm raising. So I was very curious. Now how does that work, especially with multiple kids and also taking care of a typical children as well as a nontypical child. How does that all mesh together? Obviously as you said, you do what you have to
Crady Schneider (06:26):
Do. I mean both of my kids have always spoken positively of Cooper and they are willing to help and they know what needs to be done to help him. And so they know to that they can will take breaks to feed Cooper and if we're out somewhere they know that they have to just sit for a few minutes while I feed Cooper or they have to and they just are so used to it and they don't think anything different or weird about it or their own little advocates for Cooper and they don't even know
Marsh Naidoo (07:00):
What Crady, that's actually gonna lead right into my next question, which is what does advocacy mean for you?
Crady Schneider (07:11):
I think advocacy for me is just,
(07:16):
I'm not shy about talking about Cooper and it's not like me, my trying to treat Cooper as normally as possible and making, doing that in a public setting or on a big platform. Memphis Mom Collective has 17,000 Facebook followers and they have seen lots of stuff about Cooper and just making people aware that there are people in the world who are not the same as them and that deserve all the respect and as anyone who looks just like them does. So we feed Cooper, he's G Tube fed and we feed him at the zoo and we feed him at the park and we feed him at class parties and we feed him and we take him to all of these places and Cooper's part of our family and my kids wanna go to playgrounds and parks and we can't just hide in the house because we have a child who requires a little bit extra work. So ever since ever my middle child could walk, he did walk cuz I had a child who could not walk and then when I had another third child, as soon as she could walk, she walked. They've always, I don't take strollers any places except for Cooper. It's like once Catherine Cobb could get up and move herself, she got kicked outta that stroller pretty quickly.
(08:59):
So they are just, I don't know, independent little people that, and they're their own advocates for Cooper. My daughter will say all the time that when she was a baby, Cooper helped her grow just by loving her and he thinks they're really funny and he laughs at them and he laughs when they're bad, which is extra helpful if they're in another room, he'll, he'll be laughing and he'll go in and they're like jumping off a couch or something and he thinks it's funny because it's out of the ordinary. But for me I'm like, Oh no, no, that's not what you're supposed to be doing. So I learned a long time ago that you could express a lot of emotion without speaking. And Cooper lets you know when he's mad and Cooper lets you know when he is happy and Cooper lets you know when he is frustrated all without speaking. And my kids know all of those communication devices that Cooper uses as well.
Marsh Naidoo (09:53):
Isn't it amazing Katie? Because we often equate communication with language and that's not the case. No communication does not need to be verbal.
Crady Schneider (10:04):
I also have learned by wearing a mask everywhere that so much of listening and speaking is reading lips. I can't understand people on a mask and I think it's because I stare at their mouths when they speak and I get a glimpse of Cooper's frustration that he can't all the time be understood. So yeah, it's just a whole new world for us.
Marsh Naidoo (10:32):
But listen, I am super excited to see that swing behind you. Tell me about that swing.
Crady Schneider (10:38):
That is Cooper's indoor hammock swing. So I'm in my den, we have a fireplace and we put our Christmas tree back here and when we bring Cooper back here, he loves to sit in that swing and just kind of like he'll lay back with his hands behind his head and just relaxing it. And my kids know, other kids know that they're not for them. They don't ever get in it. So that's just, yeah, it's like a personalized and hammock basically.
Marsh Naidoo (11:09):
Guys, we are going to take a short break right now. Crady is written an awesome blog to go together with this podcast, so check that out at raising kellan.org. She has also provided links to three of the articles that she's written at Memphis Mom's Collective and I know you'll enjoy reading those as well as looking at pictures of a beautiful family. As always, we covered your review of this podcast on your podcast provider. It means the world to us and sharing this episode with a friend goes a long way. All right guys, let's get back to business and hear more about Crady's Insight on the Katie Beckett waiver as well as accessibility. Katie, have you heard of the Katie Beckett waiver?
Crady Schneider (12:10):
Yes. The first six years of Cooper's Life, we lived in Arkansas and they have Tefra, which is basically the Katie Beckett waiver for Arkansas. So his care was based on his income instead of our income. So we basically had two insurances. So we had private insurance through my husband's work and then we had Tefra, which you do pay a monthly co-pay basically based on your income, but the most you would ever pay is like $249 a month. And so what they would do, the way it worked is we would use my husband's work insurance and then the rest of it would be paid by Arkansas Medicaid. So he had basically amazing healthcare for the first six years in his life. He was in a developmental preschool, he had to have several surgeries, he got a wheelchair and a stroller paid for by our insurance in the state all this kind of stuff. And it was year-round school. So even in the summer he went to school five days a week and got all of his therapies.
(13:24):
It was just a really great system. So moving to Tennessee was a bit of a shock for us. And for a while we moved to Tennessee, we rolled over into Tennessee's Medicaid just to finish the year. So we had full-time caregiver for a little while and it was, it's hurting the children to not have a full-time caregiver, especially in the summer when he can't go to school. He had someone that was there for him all the time that he got when everyone's out of school in the summer. And the other two kids are so young and so needy that sometimes Cooper, who is relatively self-sufficient when he can just sit in a wheelchair and be fine he almost gets, he gets forgotten. He just is sometimes the last person on the totem pole free household. When you have three kids, someone has gotta give for a while. And so it's just hard to have not be able to, I mean we can't provide that for him. It's like someone making $40,000 a year coming into our home and care for our child. So he, his nurse still comes a couple times a week for a couple of hours and he, Cooper's nurse does his stretches, usually gives him a bath, makes a bunch of food for Cooper and then we see him again on the weekend.
(14:55):
So it's just a whole different ballgame.
Marsh Naidoo (14:59):
I think that is what the frustration to so many parents are like us, that it is extremely difficult trying to provide your child with the best possible care. And unfortunately there are parents that if you don't full or don't not at a specific income level, if you even a dollar above that level, you get knocked off from all health. And in all honesty, medical care is just exorbitant and our kids need help. And the Katie Beckett waiver was signed into law by Governor Bill Lee in August of last year. And I know us, you are still waiting to hear back when the
Crady Schneider (15:47):
Actually when happened
Marsh Naidoo (15:49):
Is gonna happen. I mean I know Intermitently, we receive emails from the state saying they waiting on federal funding. From a parent perspective, you just kind of hold on in the hopes that financial rescue would come as soon as it can. But if I think parents out there, if they can reach out to their representatives of congressmen or Congress women, I mean,
Crady Schneider (16:16):
Yeah, part of the problem is that in Tennessee there's no real framework for what it's actually going to look like because they just sign a bill saying, Okay, we'll do this, but then they have no actual plan. So yeah, I agree. It's just kind of a frustrating waiting period. I mean Arkansas's plan worked well for us, so I would love for that to come here. And we even talked about moving back into West Memphis, but then we would lose the school. So there's like whole my husband works downtown most of the time and so we could live in West Memphis and we could send our, my other two kids go to a private school in Midtown so we could send them there easily. But then we lose Cooper School and there's no equivalent anywhere near West Memphis or Mary in Arkansas. So it's just what do you do,
Marsh Naidoo (17:18):
Especially for those of us that are living around Memphis that often come to Memphis for the weekends, guys check out Crady's website, it's Memphis Moms Collective.com because they provide awesome resources. And on that website is there anything that you would like to end off with or?
Crady Schneider (17:45):
I just would wanna say that when you're moving around the world as a kind of typical person to try and imagine everywhere you go, pushing like a normal sized eight-year-old in a wheelchair and trying to figure out where you would change their diaper and how you would feed them and how you would get them around. And I think that if you spend even a day in your regular life doing this, you would create, gain a whole new appreciation for special needs parents. I mean the world was built for walkers. The person was, the world was built for typical people who can walk through the world and interact with the world in a specific way. And there are so many more children and people who are not interacting with the world in that way. And they deserve to live life as easily and conveniently as anyone else.
(18:46):
My husband and I will switch off the first time we have to take a kid to a place, we try and do it on a day where he's around so that one of us can take the kid and scope it out without Cooper. So my daughter does gymnastics on Friday mornings and I can get Cooper in, but where the waiting area is up a flight of steps that I can't get him up by myself. So on now I'm having to figure out on days where my husband is at work on Friday mornings, I've gotta either get her a carpool, which is hard cuz she's four or sit around in the lobby instead of on upstairs where there's couches and chairs and it's meant to be sat in. So it's just things like that where we just have to, And I went the first time without Cooper on purpose so that I could check it out and I'm like, well that's not gonna work. We have to figure out other ways. But then my son plays tennis and that tennis center has a wheelchair ramp and to get inside it's all in one level. There's a lobby with a bunch of seating that's easy to fit in a wheelchair in. So I'm okay taking him there if I need to. So it's just a whole game that you have to play to figure out everything.
Marsh Naidoo (20:09):
For those parents that would like to connect with you, or for those parents that would like to know more about the blog how can they reach out to you grad?
Crady Schneider (20:21):
My personal Instagram is at Cradyone. The website is memphis.mom collective.com. You can find me on Facebook cause my name is cra, which is not the most normal name, probably the only one. So feel free to message me. I check my other's box. So
Marsh Naidoo (20:44):
Yeah, listen cra, it was a absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for just talking with us. I appreciate and value your experience and your time and look forward to seeing you in the future once we get out. And
Crady Schneider (21:03):
Yes, it was nice to finally meet you <laugh>.
Marsh Naidoo (21:06):
Have a great day
Crady Schneider (21:07):
You too. Thanks so much. Bye.
Marsh Naidoo (21:11):
Thank you for listening to us today and I would like to remind you to check out Cradys blog at raisingkellan.org as well as check out the Memphis Mom's Collective. And as always, a review and share of this episode just takes only a second, but helps us keep this free content coming. As always, guys remember, get to the top of your mountain. This is Marsh Naidoo signing off.