After looking at trends from the past 6 months, we can confidently share that Pause is in another season of hyper-growth! Just this month alone, 31 families are completing their enrollment to become part of Pause. #Wowza!

Thirty-one families means even more children attending events like Parent’s Night Out, Thrive Night, Family Fun and Unlimited! As we looked at our growth, our team and attendance for events, it just made sense to restructure our event operations to include separate coordinators for both our weekly respite events (Unlimited) and our other monthly events. This means dedicated teams to bring families the high-quality and safe programming they love in more specialized ways.

We wish our Pause families, volunteers and community partners a safe and healthy holiday season. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

If you know Pause, you may have heard about Center Pointe somewhere along the way. At Pause’s inception, we linked arms with Center Pointe to provide monthly Parent’s Night Out events to give parents of kiddos with differing needs a break. We used several different host sites, but quickly found that Center Pointe was the most popular with families and volunteers and it was the site best suited to serve the most kids!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! December means we get to host our favorite annual event. This was year 7 for the Pause Holiday Shoppe and over 400 people came together to share in the excitement of the holiday season. We played, we ate and we shopped ‘till we dropped!

Hey Pause fam! Did you know today is Giving Tuesday? You might be thinking “Wait.. Is that even a thing?!” Sure is! Giving Tuesday was started by a New York City nonprofit in 2012 to encourage people to give back to their local communities. In fact, Giving Tuesday has gained so much traction that last year people donated nearly $2.5 billion in the United States. Wow! That’s a lot of impact!

It’s time to introduce you to our very own rockstar Pause Volunteer - Sarah Preda! Sarah has been volunteering with Pause for the past 6 years and has been an Impact Partner with Pause for the last 4, which means we get to see her smiling face once a month! #ThatsALotOfEvents

What happens at Thrive Night stays at Thrive Night. #IfYouKnowYouKnow

It’s a tagline that was created after one of our first Thrive events. It encapsulates the fun and child-like silliness that happens when caregivers are given the space to trade in daily responsibilities and stress for a night created just for them. Our Pause parents resonate with it so much they have started making t-shirts to wear to events!

Do you know Sarah Buffie? If you live in Ohio and have engaged with Pause or engaged in trainings about resilience in some capacity, you most likely have met Sarah and her big heart and personality! #BecauseShesARockstar

We can’t believe it’s November already, but we’re so excited for all the fun that comes with the change of the season including: cuddling up by the fire with hot cocoa, watching our kiddos playing in the snow and continuing on holiday traditions with our families. In Pause world, this time of year means we are in full swing preparing for our annual Holiday Shoppe event! The Pause Holiday Shoppe is an annual event families talk about all year round. #ItsKindOfABigDeal

If you’ve been with us for a while now, you have seen the face of one of our amazing Impact Partners roaming the halls, welcoming our youngest Pause kiddos and sharing good news with parents at our Parent’s Night Out and Parent’s Day Out events.

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.