08/25/2025
STORY TIME!
I’ve been open about WHY I started this little business! It all began with my daughter, the lovely and beautiful Ida and also myself!
I learned the term “Canon event” and I’ve had A LOT of them! I’m sure everyone has and they’ve all been different! For me there was becoming a mother, then becoming a mother again! Or growing into womanhood and hitting those familiar roadblocks (you know what I’m talking about ladies 😑) but also a HUGE ONE, maybe even the biggest one was being diagnosed with Autism and severe ADHD (along with some other way less adorable things) at THIRTY ONE!!! Yes, you heard me, 31.
The average age a male will receive his ADHD or Autism diagnosis is 7 years old, for a woman with ADHD, it’s on average 27-37 years old, that autism diagnoses usually comes along later if she has both!
So it’s not surprising to me that I didn’t even suspect it for such a long time, until I became a mother and was like “wait…you guys get dressed out of pjs? YOU REMEMBER TO BRING SNACKS!? YOURE TELLING ME YOU DONT LEAVE EVERYTHING TO THE LAST MINUTE AND THEN PANIC????”
Still I didn’t get the help I needed, I tried a few times but was brushed off as hormonal and a little depressed which I guess doctors think is normal for women? So I’d just go on my merry way thinking that this was just my life, this is how I’d always feel and I’d struggle through for my babies and then see what happens when they’re grown! Maybe I’ll have answers by then, maybe I’ll have just taken myself out the game, maybe I’ll miraculously be better once ye olde menopause comes and goes!
Then I noticed my daughter…how she would world build with inanimate every day items…spoons, washcloths, cans of soup even! They would all be bestowed a name, a profession, a riveting back story (I’m looking at you, can of Tim hortons chili! I’d never have thought you were once a cloud, transformed into your metallic self with a yummy, salty inside filled with such curiosity, such a deep sense of injustice and desire that you must save the other cans in the pantry because of the constant threat of being eaten, and to do so meant finding refuge with all these other cans and bags of pasta in various places within the home) and I found it odd, but quirky rather than concerning!
Then came the signs of ARFID, the hatred for socks and shoes, the preference for certain rituals. The emotional outburst, the random regressions in skill or behavior that would stick for a month then suddenly come back with additional skills that have appeared.
Much like other young girls (myself included) when I expressed concern to anyone it was met with “she’s normal! That’s just how girls are!” “She’s passionate! Girls are always more emotional” “girls are always a little bossy! She’s fine! Look at her! She’s playing nicely with the friends! She’s surpassing so many milestones early” but it didn’t sit right with me!
And as I started searching for answers for my daughter, I was inadvertently answering my own questions that had been on my mind since I could remember!
I tried over and over again to get help and get my questions answered while simultaneously advocating for my own daughter who seemed completely normal to everyone I spoke to!
It was futile and unfortunately until my Husband made his dominating male presence and support known, I was hitting dead ends.
Finally! After an exceptionally scary round of depression which was accompanied by some scarier suicidal ideation, I ended up in an AHS funded program where I began receiving both free therapy and free psychiatric help! It took 1 week and hours of assessment for me to get the diagnosis! There it was in writing! With all the separate descriptors that explained WHY I was ADHD and Autistic.
At first I was ecstatic! I had answers! Now I had medication and a therapy plan outlined, and then it dawned on me, that it took the better part of 3 decades and being severely suicidal after my second child for anyone to take me seriously…and why? I went to school with many boys offhandedly diagnosed by teachers and then promptly cared for, it was THAT easy for them! Yet I had to endure, suffer and leave my academic career (I did not graduate and basically checked out and dropped out mid grade 12 because I was failing due to multiple invisible disorders and disabilities and instead of being helped, I was simply called problematic, lazy and stupid) and then enter the real world with nothing of use from the school system, only the crushing weight of trauma in my shoulders and the knowledge that I was simply a problem, an inconvenience and a stupid one at that!
Why? Why did my gender play such a big role? I refuse to believe it’s just because even in neurodivergence, girls are more mature and more capable of enduring discomfort, even mentally. But that’s what it was. I’d learned early how to mask enough to slip under the radar and through the cracks. Not purely because I was a girl, it was because I was in a world where neurodivergent or not, I was expected to endure in a way boys simply weren’t.
I went through a series of emotions. I was angry in a way I’d never known, it seemed endlessly deep and dark and dangerous. Then it was grief…I didn’t need to have that life, that experience, I didn’t need to suffer and end up so far behind my peers, it happened because multiple systems had failed me. Then it was thirst for knowledge, I knew I wasn’t the only woman with this reality, I knew there were girls, children slowly coming to the realization that they didn’t think like everyone else, didn’t feel emotion the same way and that they needed to perfect their mask because it would keep them safe in a system that would punish her for any cracks that appeared in it.
I began to advocate for my daughter in a way I’d never felt or witnessed! This was a health issue, an issue of a system built on misogyny, an issue of sexism and a thinly veiled belief that women just didn’t matter, their health didn’t matter, their access to education didn’t matter…and I wouldn’t have it, not for my girl.
I discovered the waitlist for assessment was 3 years for my daughter but only 6 months for boys, even though my daughter was struggling more, her diagnosis obvious, she was expected to step aside for boys over and over again until her wait list time quadrupled that of thousands of little boys with mothers looking for the same answers, probably unaware that these beautiful, capable little girls needed to suffer for her swift answers.
We paid privately (it’s disgustingly expensive btw, but thank god for benefits and direct billing) and in 3 sessions, the total time being 2.5 hours of assessment, I received the report that my daughter had ADHD, not typical for girls who are predominantly inattentive, she was SEVERE COMBINATION ADHD. I’d asked questions about autism but with such a diagnosis and her young age, that question would be answered in time.
So it took $5k, multiple phone calls, a few screaming matches with doctors and eventually a couple assessments to get the answer and as soon as we did…the resources poured in. She would have a free TA at school that’s just for her, it’s government funded, we didn’t have to pay, she’d have a slightly different schedule and approach to her school work that allows her to succeed without sacrificing her comfort.
There were only two more hurdles I could see. I’d found the source of the issue, I’d beat it for myself and my daughter, and now it was awareness and knowledge that was left.
I noticed it hadn’t taken long for kids to realize my daughter was different. She was easily upset, overwhelmed and combative, she would get loud, cry and sometimes lash out and they found it hilarious. I didn’t blame the kids, or the parents, how could they teach their children something they didn’t even understand? But why didn’t we understand and why weren’t we teaching our children about it?
Everyone was expecting my daughter to work extra hard, experience continuous discomfort in order to fit in with these “normal” children. Though every day even in an environment where she didn’t wear a mask was like running a marathon compared to other typical children who would breeze past her in a light hearted skip, it was HER they expected to adjust. Such a huge thing to ask for her when to educate children and have them soften the slightest bit with awareness and education was such a small request instead.
But how do I change this? I was still very much in the shadows of the carnage my own life had left me in. I had no diploma or GED. I was intelligent and gifted but unless I fit their criteria, the world wouldn’t see it. I had no resources, no credible titles to allow me to even talk about it and I had no money. So I thought what can I do? What skills do I have that I could monetize??
Well, I could craft, I could sew, I could iron, I was a stain removing magician, creative and innovative enough I could mend just about anything, I knew how to embroider, bead, and even do a little woodwork…I knew how to make blankets, teddys, clothes and many other things…and so one day as I stood listening to my audio book, feeling my body regulating as I watched the iron in my hand remove all the wrinkles in the adorable 5T dress in my hand…it clicked and Ida’s Launderette came to be!
Like all businesses it’s a slow start! I have only myself, my windows of time and the resources are all from my own wallet and supply! But it didn’t and doesn’t matter. I was doing something, I had a goal and it wasn’t financial growth so I could spend on treats for myself and the kids, it’s financial growth so I can slowly build an arsenal of resources to EDUCATE!
I started Ida’s Launderette with the solid purpose of using profit to be able to provide the tools and resources to daycares, preschools and elementary/high schools to educate them on the VAST subject of the two most common and inherited disorders so that my daughter and many other children could hopefully start breezing through their days along side their neurotypical peers, so that the “adjusting” in social situations would come from both sides! She could walk into a class room, birthday party, play place, summer camp knowing that a mask wasn’t necessary because the knowledge was common, the stigma removed.
I started Ida’s launderette to give my child and other children a chance to exist in a world they can enjoy, not hide from because they’re told they should be anything other than just themselves
