Community partnerships are essential for Pause to support as many families, children, and volunteers as we do. Partners help out in a variety of ways including donating food or supplies for events, providing services at discounted rates, or even offering their services or trainings exclusively for Pause families. One community partner has been with Pause since the very beginning and is an important piece of the Pause puzzle - Miami University’s Department of Family Science and Social Work.

Have you heard of SendAFriend? Maybe you’ve seen their super cute stuffed animals on Instagram or Facebook? SendAFriend is an e-commerce business that allows customers to send stuffed animal care packages with customized notes all over the world. With over 30 custom stuffed animals for sale on their site, each of the toys is an exclusive design tailored to perfectly fit their packaging, which consists of a bright blue box featuring their signature ‘Someone Loves You’ motif. Customers often send care packages to family, friends, or really anyone who could use a smile.

One of the questions we are asked most is “How is Pause funded?” After a recent conversation with our team, we realized that topic is one we kind of avoid. Not because it’s not important, but because it can feel less critical than the day to day support we give families. We also deeply understand that without donors and funders we simply wouldn’t have much to do or talk about.

Adults, college students, high school kids, families and groups volunteer with Pause for many different reasons… to feel like they are making a difference in their community, to give back, to fulfill school requirements, to fuel a passion… the list goes on.

Guess what Pause fam?! We’ve added another Pause staff member to our team - welcome Sara Porter! Sara is SO excited to come on board and work as the Community Engagement Coordinator. Her main role is to get to know you and help the community be part of the Pause story of impact.

Have kids? Have someplace you need to be? Want to be? Wish you could be? Maybe it’s a concert. A baseball game. Dinner out with friends or your partner. When most of us feel like taking a break, the struggle is as hard as seeing if the neighborhood babysitter is available or if grandma wants to have an overnight with our sweet, adorable, ready to be spoiled babes.

The proof is in the pudding.

Burning the midnight oil.

Anyone know where those popular sayings came from? Yeah, we don’t either. We just wanted your attention. #HelpUsOutGoogle

We might not understand the literal meaning of old phrases, but we do know something Google doesn’t. We are experts in all things CAN DO - what it stands for and what it really means.

CAN DO comes from the idea that we literally can do anything if we work together! CAN DO stands for Connecting A Need, Delivering Opportunities. On the surface that makes simple sense, but at Pause there is always a deeper meaning behind even the little things...even a pretty obvious acronym.

How do families with special needs kiddos build resilience and move from surviving to thriving? Pause provides different support and resources for families to build resilience and thrive within their family. This seems like a large task, and to be honest - it is. But, Pause doesn’t do it alone. It takes dedicated, consistent relationships with community partners.

Kiddos with differing needs thrive in learning environments when they feel supported and their needs are being met. Thanks to brain science and years of training for our team, we know the importance of pairing an up-regulating activity with a down-regulating activity to help children feel safe, seen, and heard. This framework has been built into Pause programming for years, but this past Sunday we were able to expand this thinking to our new space and brand new program, Unlimited! Unlimited was born through our growing partnership with Center Pointe and brings the same kind of flexibility and accommodations many students receive in school to their learning on Sunday mornings!

We’ve had a lot of big days in Pause world this year - from becoming our own 501c3, to launching a new website, to moving out of our old office space. But Sunday was probably the BIGGEST day yet! Pause hosted and Open House to display the 8,200 sq ft Pause now gets to call home.

When we say “Back to School” you might think of an exciting shopping trip with your kiddos for new clothes and supplies. When families who have kiddos with differing needs hear “Back to School” they may find themselves immediately anxious and stressed dreading the shopping trip that will throw their kiddo into sensory overload.

Volunteers are the core of Pause. And when we say core - we mean it. They are the foundation of everything we do and give Pause the capacity to support hundreds of families each year. Because volunteers (and interns) gift their time, they allow us to keep our staff size small. This means we can focus our funding less on payroll and more on Pause events, support and resources for families. Sustainable programming is essential because schedules and predictability are everything to kiddos who thrive on routine. Long standing programming also allows us time to build trust and relationships with parents - and that means they have someone in their corner for the long haul.

Did you know that the four pillars of Pause - rest, support, connection, and fun are intentional strategies based on national data and over 7500 hours of our Pause team talking to caregivers? We provide different resources and events that fit into each of these categories because we know a family can move from surviving to thriving and have better overall outcomes if they are getting a balance of each of these. If you’ve checked out the Resource Hub on our website, you already know this is a priority for us!

What does it mean to really belong? To feel accepted? To feel valued? To feel loved? For special needs families, finding this sense of belonging can be an uphill climb. After the extra 35-40 hours per week in care for a child with complex needs, finding different clubs, groups, and sports who understand your child can feel overwhelming and exhausting. When you find that niche, that sweet spot, it’s like the pieces all into place.

Something Pause doesn’t often talk about are the stories we hear from families about their journey to find a faith community. They have shared past experiences and what keeps them from their neighborhood churches, synagogues or mosques. They have shared the list of questions they often have like...

“Do they have an environment that’s safe for my child?”

“Do they have trained staff to help my child learn?”

“Do they have a ministry dedicated to special needs?”

“Will they ask my family to not return because they can’t handle my child?”

Isolation. Many special needs families find themselves isolated in their communities. Why? While in some ways it feels super complicated, it really boils down to something super simple. It’s difficult to find people who understand - who get the special needs life - because it really does take living it to fully grasp it. While most of us have 7-8 natural supports we can call on in times of need, that number falls in half almost immediately for special needs parents with most of those supports diminishing over time. Sitters are hard to find, schedules are full of appointments and sometimes just pure exhaustion after a long day makes maintaining relationships difficult.

This is a BIG week in Pause world! As most of you know, we are in the process of launching out on our own and have filed to become our own 501c3. On Thursday, July 1 Pause will officially become Pause for Parents, Play for Kids, Inc!

This exciting news brings SO many different ways to serve special needs families in creative and innovative ways. One of the large projects that Pause has been working on in the background is a NEW Pause website! We are excited to announce that pauseforparents.org will launch on Thursday, July 1 as well!

You could say that along with our kiddos, Pause is a little neurodiverse too! Pause has been fortunate enough to have the flexibility to do things a little bit differently to help fill in gaps that might be more difficult for typical programs to meet. We love our differences (see a theme here?) and use them to create change. With the launch of our own 501c3, we are gaining even more freedom to bring out the character of who we are.

Okay, okay. We know the risk of a statement like “when you volunteer with Pause you alter the course of a person’s life forever” is that it could resemble a corny Hallmark movie line. #DontComeAtUs The truth is, we have real life stories hitting our inbox every single week. Sometimes we see a family change in tremendous ways and sometimes the volunteers themselves change.

One thing Pause can promise is growth! Daily we watch families reach goals, learn new things and change the trajectory of their lives. Monthly we witness our volunteers expanding their understanding of the community in which they live and the impact they have in it. And yearly, our annual data shows the advancement of the program overall. Since the inception of Pause, we have grown over 2000%. A number that doesn’t make sense for a grassroots initiative that started with one conversation in a local Panera, but one that we are grateful for.