The Moose on the IEP Table: What Lisa Richer Wants Every Advocate-Mom to Know
Lisa Richer did not plan to become a neurodiversity consultant. She planned to raise her kids, do her corporate leadership work, and figure it all out the way she had always figured things out: by working harder than everyone else.
That worked right up until it didn't.
She burned out completely during COVID. Diagnosed with ADHD and C-PTSD in the same season. Flat on the couch. And somewhere in that collapse, she finally stopped trying to fit herself into a world that had never been designed for her brain.
What came out the other side is journey2bloom, a consulting practice that sits at the intersection of family room, classroom, boardroom, and arena. Whatever domain you are struggling in, Lisa brings a neurodiversity lens. And for a lot of the moms who find her, the most urgent domain is the school system.
That is where we spent most of our conversation.
Her quick win for this episode is one she lived herself. Last week, dysregulated and running on fumes, she made one choice: she grabbed her weights instead of going to the cabinet for chips and salsa. Former elite gymnast, still lifting, and she has figured out that having the weights in the family room where she actually lives is what makes that choice possible at all. Out of sight is out of mind. Right there is right there.
Small design change. Real result. That is the whole philosophy.
Back to the schools.
When I told Lisa about my seventh grader, failing only because he cannot turn his homework in, she did not flinch. She recognized the pattern immediately. Executive functioning. The homework is done. The turning it in part is where it falls apart. And those are two completely different problems that need two completely different solutions.
Here is what she walked me through.
First, before you do anything, you need to do a little diagnostic work. Which classes? What time of day? What exactly happens right before the assignment doesn't get submitted? Is it a task initiation issue, a transition issue, a working memory issue, or is it anxiety showing up as avoidance? The answer changes what you do next.
Then, depending on your school situation, you look at supports. Public school, a 504 plan covers accommodations. An IEP covers specially designed instruction. Private school, it is more nuanced. No legal mandate for the same framework, but many schools will do their own version, and a consultant can help you negotiate something creative that actually works.
Lisa's take on the IEP conversation is important: the label is not the risk. The label is the access. Her friend in Pennsylvania hesitated because she didn't want her son to "look different." Lisa's response was simple. The more you give someone, the more opportunity they have to be successful.
She works from a framework she calls RiPE iDEAS. Reflect, implement in small increments, practice, evaluate. That lowercase i is intentional. Small. Not a whole overhaul of the classroom. One thing. Done consistently. Evaluated honestly. Repeated.
She also calls herself a neurodiversity consultant rather than an advocate or a special education helper on purpose. When she walks into a school as an advocate, she gets walls up. When she walks in as a success partner who wants to understand what the school needs too, she gets curious questions and open doors. Same mission. Different entry point.
She does not do mediation. She does not do due process complaints. She is the person who helps you figure out what you do not know you do not know, and then helps the school figure out the same thing. Then she hands you the tools and sends you off to do it yourself. That is the train-the-trainer model. Her goal is for people to not need her anymore.
Her other phrase, the one that keeps coming up, is the moose on the table.
Every IEP meeting has one. The thing nobody names. The uncomfortable truth that everyone in the room is aware of and nobody is saying out loud. Lisa's job, and the job she encourages parents to take on, is to name the moose. Not aggressively. Curiously. "I want to make sure I understand. Can we talk about what's happening when he sits down to start the assignment?" That is a moose-naming sentence. Soft. Direct. Aimed at the actual problem.
She is also the author of a chapter called Unbecoming to Become in the collaborative book Confident You: The Raw Conversations. She is offering a PDF of her chapter to anyone who reaches out via the show. If you want it, email her at lisa@journey2bloom.com and mention the podcast.
Two things she said that I keep coming back to.
One: burnout is not a moment. It is a cycle. A lot of us are in a repetitive loop of burning out and recovering and burning out again, and we are not calling it burnout because it doesn't look like the crash-and-burn version. But the body knows. And she learned the hard way that listening to the body is not optional.
Two: differences are not deficits. She kept saying it in different ways. We need linear thinkers and bubble thinkers. We need each other to appreciate those differences instead of pushing back against them. She grew up being told to be less emotional, less passionate, less energetic. She is done with that. And she wants our kids never to have to carry it.
You can find Lisa at journey2bloom.com
