Our world is full of stories - fictional, fancy land stories of princes and pirates. Inspirational, encouraging stories that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. And even real life, really hard stories where it’s up to us to find the silver linings. At Pause, we have the honor of hearing family stories, getting to know their family as a whole and, if we’re lucky, truly being a part of their larger story moving forward.

Creating meaningful experiences is a Pause program value that transcends experiences for not only families, caregivers and kiddos, but volunteers, too! Volunteers choose Pause for a variety of reasons - to further their professional career, to gain experience with kids who have disabilities, to fulfill club or organization service hours… the list goes on. Although our volunteers begin volunteering for a variety of reasons, we want them all to leave feeling a sense of purpose, accomplishment and impact so we focus on the experience created for them and even by them.

Respite. That’s “Pause speak” for any opportunity a caregiver gets to exhale. Take a break. Recharge their battery. With the 30-80 extra hours a week of caring for a child with extra needs, respite is a need we continuously hear from families. These extra hours caregivers accumulate mean less time for relationships - family relationships, marital relationships and even friendships. Caregivers have shared that the constant battle of defending their parenting strategies or explaining their child’s behavior can make relationships exhausting to maintain. Without these social relationships or connections, caregivers can fall towards the slippery slope of isolation.

As Pause staff, we consider ourselves innovators. Our programming team innovates new ways to enhance family experiences. Our family strategy team implements new tools and resources to help kids regulate their brains and bodies. Our development team strategically seeks out partnerships and donor support with those that align with our mission and vision. And sometimes, groups or organizations reach out to Pause with an innovative idea to bring hope to families with special needs.

Pause was honored to be selected by a group of students from Badin High School as the focus for their senior project. The group was inspired by Pause’s story at a local service fair and wanted to innovate a new way to bring their senior project to life and landed on curating bags full of goodies for both caregivers and kiddos with recent hospital stays.

Our dream goal - or big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) as Pause likes to say - is to have Pause stretch to every county and even every state! A BHAG indeed! As many great things do, we know it will take time, effort and community support. We also believe we are ready to take this next step of a multi-site model.

The process of getting to know families' stories and understanding the needs/interests of their children matters on so many levels and we believe we have cracked the code after perfecting our systems for the past (almost) 9 years. This allows us to expand knowing that no matter the community we are serving or the physical space we are in, we can stay true to our values, standards and best practices. We sort of like to compare this to Chick-fil-a. It doesn’t matter if you are in an airport, drive-through or mall - the chicken sandwich and “my pleasure” are the same.

When considering a partnership with a business, organization or program we ask ourselves these questions:

Does this partner align with Pause’s mission, vision and values?

Will this partnership benefit the families, kids and volunteers that we serve?

Can Pause further its impact by partnering with this outside organization?

When the answer to all of these questions is “yes!” we feel confident we can officially “Pause approve” the partnership. Over the past eight years, Pause has linked arms with many different partners - including parent coaches and consultants, trauma-responsive therapists, faith based missionaries, social service agencies, local colleges and high schools, local photographers, small businesses and even top tier pizza shops!

Increasing hope. It’s in Pause’s mission statement to “...to build resilience and increase hope.” Most of our families have children who will continue to hold their diagnosis through adulthood. We honor labels as amazing parts of who each child is and, at the same time, help build the caregivers ability to move through the difficult pieces of it with strength, new perspective and - you guessed it, HOPE.

It’s important to understand that loving their kids and grieving their diagnosis aren’t mutually exclusive. There is a season of heartache when a child receives a diagnosis that isn’t often talked about. There can be endless love and joy for our child AND disappointment and sadness that the dreams for their life need to shift and look different. When most girls are 15, they daydream about getting married and having kids and those daydreams don’t always include thinking about wheelchair access, mental health challenges or long hospital stays. There will always be this delicate balance of celebration and joy coupled with overwhelm and isolation when navigating special needs life.

When donors give to a nonprofit’s general fund, they often don’t get to see what their donation specifically provided - even if they understand why it matters or why it’s important. Pause wants to change that! We want to share the impact your time, talent and resources make on the families we serve.

There are several family fun events throughout the year that absolutely require donor support - especially since Pause is now supporting 750 kids! Some examples of this are our annual Back to School Bash, the Holiday Shoppe, and the Easter Eggstravaganza coming up in just 8 short weeks! We love this event because it provides a safe place for kids with disabilities (and their whole family!) to engage in Easter egg hunts and gives caregivers an opportunity to cross one thing off the list by taking home a customized Easter basket ready to go for Easter morning.

When something unexpected happens in your life, maybe even traumatic or tragic, most people have 7-8 natural supports they can easily call to lean on for support like family, friends, neighbors, sport team parents or people in their faith community. Statistics show that in families who have children with extra needs, those numbers often drop to less than half, leaving them with a very limited number of people in their circle to provide care in times of crisis.

Pause has the unique opportunity to connect… connect caregivers to other caregivers, connect volunteers to kids with disabilities, or even connect community partners and donors with opportunities to get involved. Sometimes these connections are intentionally planned and carefully curated, other times these connections are more organic and spontaneous. Some of the best connections come from people looking to share their passions, interests and unique gifts with the Pause community.

The Pause staff prides ourselves in continuous feedback and improvement - for our program, for the people we serve and for ourselves. We think it’s highly important to reflect on where we’ve come in the past year and where we’re going in the upcoming year.

Our staff engages in a staff retreat every December to do just that! We block out intentional time to dive deep into every support, resource and event Pause offers and talk about what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s missing and what’s confusing. Everything we brainstorm is an opportunity to further grow our program to better support our families, kids, volunteers and community.

As 2022 comes to a close, our Pause staff wants to take a moment to thank our Pause for Parents, Play for Kids community for continuing to support our mission of building resilience and increasing hope for families with special needs.

You may remember different points in your childhood where your parents decided it was time for a holiday family photo. Your mom may have picked out the perfect outfit to match your siblings, all dressed in red and green. The multiple photo shoots. The many flashes. The constant smiles. The arguments and stress #IfYouKnowYouKnow… the list goes on.

Our kids have the most potential to change the world. Literally. They have the passion, the drive and the motivation for change. Our job is to cultivate the environment where their passion is encouraged and where they feel empowered. When our kids feel safe, seen and supported, they can feel brave enough to try something new!

This fall, Lakota Schools sponsored the “Stuff the Bus” event to collect non-perishable food items for Reach out Lakota - a local nonprofit providing families with shelf stable food items, gently used clothing, small household items and other supplement items like paper products, personal hygiene products, infant care items and cleaning supplies.

Some of us are Buddy the Elf who can hardly wait in anxious anticipation for the holidays to get here and some of us relate more to Ebeneezer Scrooge who would rather skip the season altogether and get back to normal life - because holidays can just be…well, hard.

Families who have kids with special needs can find themselves even more stressed around the holidays with the disruption of normal schedules, addition of difficult transitions or uncertainty of how their kids may react to their environment. Holiday transitions are hard to master because they only come once per year and visiting family and relatives that you don’t see often can be very overwhelming and cause big emotions.

Building resilience and increasing hope for special needs families is our mission, but impossible to achieve on our own. You provide the resources and tools needed to provide rest, support, connection and fun to families.

Routines & consistency. Two primary things that our kiddos need to thrive. When we can provide safe, structured routines they know what to expect and what is needed to transition. Any parent can probably agree with this - and those parents who have kids with special needs may say that routines and consistency are one of the non-negotiables in their home.

On July 1, 2021 Pause celebrated the launch of our new event space! Over the past year, we observed how children utilized each space, but more importantly, how the environment set them up for success. Among a host of rooms, part of the space consists of three different leveled sensory rooms and a backyard themed gross motor room. All children have access to these support as they ask for them throughout their time at Pause. One of those sensory spaces, the Reflections Room, has become well loved by kids who have coined it the “ocean room”, as it’s equipped to mimic an under-the-ocean experience. The room is complete with dark blue lights, tents, a cozy big teddy bear and a bubble light to provide an overall calming atmosphere.

Volunteers are the backbone of Pause! With only 10 paid staff serving over 1,200 caregivers and kiddos… volunteers are essential to make programming happen for Pause families. While Pause is known for volunteer opportunities with kids, there are SO many more ways to get involved as a group!

On October 22, Pause hosted our first ever annual gala! We invited guests to experience Pause in a whole new way. Whether they walked into the gala supporting Pause for years or just learned about Pause last month, guests left feeling impacted, inspired and influenced.