Ep. 56 - AAC & Autism: A "Tigerish" Mom's Gift of Voice with Lana Marcucio

Today's guest, Lana Marcucio, found us through last year's episode 40 that we did with Not a Tiger Mom Podcast's hosts (two neurodivergent moms raising their own autistic kids), and she connected with us in hopes of sharing her story too. In honor of April as Autism Awareness Month, we were thrilled to speak with her about her journey.Lana is a 1.5 generation Vietnamese/Chinese American mom of 3, one of which is a non-speaking or non-verbal daughter with Autism. She eventually turned to technology to help her daughter speak, as Lana has been a mobile app developer for many years prior to having kids. So when this mom couldn't find a software good enough for her daughter, she took to creating one herself.  Her daughter's name is Quinn and her app is called QVoice.In the episode today, Lana shares with us how discovering her children had varying disabilities actually led her to be a recovering tiger mom--hence her moniker of "Tigerish Mom" was born. She explains how tiger parenting did not work with her son who had ADHD, nor her non-verbal daughter who Lana would go on to learn had both epilepsy and autism. Between navigating new diagnoses and giving birth to a third child while also figuring out how or when to explain to her immigrant parents about Quinn, Lana was overwhelmed with the many things she had to juggle. We talk about how Lana had to break so many generational cycles and do the deep inner work to heal in order to foster the kind of relationships she truly desired to have with her children--including the softening of her previous tiger mom approaches. Lana also shares with us how being trilingual and using her own understanding of languages helped her to develop the kind of AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) application that would best help her daughter, who did not have strong receptive language skills.  We loved learning about the challenges and needs of language development in some neurodivergent children from Lana, as well as hearing how she tended to her own maternal mental health over the years with therapy and medications. Take a listen to this strong, inspiring mama's journey today!Find more of Lana:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/qvoice.app/https://www.instagram.com/tigerishmom/Website/App: https://qvoice.appYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@qvoice-appIf you resonate with this episode, you may also like:Episode 40: Neurodivergent Moms Raising Autistic Kids with Jenny Lai and Bettina Lopez-Lam from Not a Tiger Mom PodcastSend us your thoughts! Hey Healing the Tigress listeners! This is Dr. Jenny Kim from episode 45. You may remember my story about losing my baby Joey before he was 7 months old and how I grew through the grief. Last year, I wrote and created a customizable picture book called "Look to the Sky," reminding loved ones that their love lives on through every day signs. Now we are trying to make this book more accessible to the community. So from now unt Support the show✨ If you'd like to subscribe to our podcast for access to more bonus episodes, please click here for Buzzsprout Subscriptions! Once subscribed, you can use an RSS feed to listen from any of your podcast platforms. Thanks in advance for your support, as this really helps us keep the show going! ❤️ (Think of it like buying us a boba...to share! 😉🧋)