At GoDaddy we believe that to truly take care of our customers, we begin by taking care of ourselves. Living a life of meaning and personal fulfilment enables us to live full lives and be at the top of our game. The ‘Live Passionately’ series is a spotlight on GoDaddy employees doing just that!
I joined GoDaddy in 2014 and am currently a Technical Account Manager working with the Fully Managed Server department.
I like helping others as much as I can and I get to do so by writing help articles for other employees; working on support request tickets, and speaking with customers via chat and over the phone to resolve complex server-related issues.
Our lives changed when we adopted 3 boys from foster care and another from a private adoption in addition to our birth daughter. We instantly went from a house of 3 to a house of 7 in a year; it has been a crazy ride. The three middle boys from foster care, faced many hardships in their early life due to a challenging environment.
Fast forward a few years, many trials and tribulations later, we now have our eldest out of the house and grown-up but still have a 17-year-old, a 13-year-old, an 11-year-old, and a 9-year-old at home. After much testing, we found that our 11-year-old is autistic (on the higher end of the spectrum) and our 17-year-old presents on the higher end of the spectrum only in certain scenarios. With our 11-year-old, we never saw it until we received the diagnosis last year. How could we have not noticed it before? We felt disappointed that we let him down all these years until we were consoled by one of his psychiatrists who stated that individuals on the higher end of the spectrum tend to not present until around the 4th grade when social expectations change.
Our 11 year old may have difficulty managing his temper at times. He struggles as there is no consoling him. He may then act out in the form of property destruction and physical aggression. Regardless, we love him dearly and realize that it is not intentional. It’s simply his inability to cope with a range of emotions that can come on suddenly.
He has since had an extensive neuropsychological exam to determine the best approach for him moving forward. Since his diagnosis, we’ve had numerous services put in place from a clinic specializing in autism spectrum disorder to help him cope with anger and frustrations, as well as daily life. He goes to a special education classroom at school which performs occupational therapy with him, as well as general education. We’ve seen so much improvement since.
He is also very artistic and can reverse engineer toys and build Legos with the best of them. We constantly encourage him to pull things apart and we provide a variety of stimuli that will help him grow and develop into the fine young man we know he’ll be.
My advice to anyone who lives with an autistic child is to show them unlimited love and patience and get services in place as early as possible — these services will only help to better their life and yours. It won’t be an easy ride, but love will prevail.
Working at GoDaddy, I’ve been fortunate enough to have an amazing team support me. I have the most understanding leaders anyone could ever ask for. They know of my family’s situation and have supported me and have been there for me countless times. I couldn’t imagine working for anyone else, here at GoDaddy.
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