Siblings Beyond Labels: Nikki and Robby

Nikki Donnelly was 11 when her brother Robby was born, and they soon became inseparable.  Robby, who has autism and an intellectual disability, and Nikki, who is neurotypical, share stories of their adventures, the dynamics of growing up in a neurodiverse family, and the unexpected ways that disability has helped shape their lives for the better. 

Transcript

Transcript 

00:00:01 Johnandrew Slominski 

Welcome to the Autism Annex podcast. I'm Johnandrew Slominski. 

00:00:07 Johnandrew Slominski 

In today's episode, I talked with Robby and Nikki Donnelly about their extraordinary relationship as neurodiverse and neurotypical siblings, respectively. They're both incredibly insightful and candid, and they share openly about what it was like growing up, and the important roles they've continued to play in one another's lives into middle age. 

00:00:32 Johnandrew Slominski 

Welcome Robby and Nicky, and thanks for being here. 

00:00:34 Robby Donnelly 

Hi. 

00:00:37 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. 

00:00:41 Johnandrew Slominski 

Nikki, in your professional life, you're a researcher and a special educator.  Tell us a little bit about the inclusion work that you specialize in. 

00:00:53 Nikki Donnelly 

My main research topic is inclusive practices, but that's kind of my dissertation I'm in the middle of right now and that's my area of focus, but changing teachers mindsets so that they will be more open to include. That's one of the major barriers for inclusion. 

00:01:13 Nikki Donnelly 

Also, I helped start the Oregon Sibling Leadership Network chapter. I'm also on the board of the national Sibling Leadership Network and the Research co-chair for them right now. So those are kind of like all the things I dabble in. I did run a STAR classroom for several years, and then I was an administrator that oversaw 15 preschool and kindergarten STAR classrooms. 

00:01:43 Johnandrew Slominski 

Nicki and Robby, I want to ask you both about what it was like growing up. Let's start with you, Robby. What was your relationship with your sister like when you were kids? 

00:01:55 Robby Donnelly 

We were, we were close. 

00:01:58 Johnandrew Slominski 

You were close.  Nikki, looking back, what are some of the things that you value most about your childhood? 

00:02:09 Nikki Donnelly 

My brother. I say my brother was my first teacher.  So, he has autism and well, he has autism and an intellectual disability. I think the intellectual disability probably impacts him more now than autism because over the years we've got great coping strategies. But when he was young, he was much more impacted by the autism and was basically nonspeaking I would say until like age of 5 or so. And so, I'm 10 years older than him. So he, you know, I don't know the exact he was probably two or three. 

00:02:55 Nikki Donnelly 

When he was first diagnosed and he was not first diagnosed with autism. They didn't know what he had, because, you know, the knowledge of autism back in 1985 was much—not where we are now. Yeah. Yeah. And they would not give him the autism diagnosis because he showed empathy. So he wasn't diagnosed with autism until he was like 7 I think but. But anyways we knew what it was but he but he was, you know. 

00:03:31 Nikki Donnelly 

The self-injurious banging his head. He had the permanent knot. Our house was on lockdown, basically, and someone had to have eyes on him at every second of the day. 

00:03:46 Nikki Donnelly 

And yeah, we had the locks up high on the doors because where we lived there was like a spur train track and you know, stereotypically, he was obsessed with trains and would just bolt out the house and down the street to run to the train tracks. 

00:04:06 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah, we were, like always on high alert. But when he was young and interventionists were coming to the home, I really got to play. I learned a lot there. They included me in, you know, in some of the therapies they were doing with just learning how to help him develop his speech and so forth. 

00:04:29 Nikki Donnelly 

00:04:30 Johnandrew Slominski 

And you're a young teenager here. And you and Robby end up becoming pretty inseparable. 

00:04:37 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah. So I was, yeah, you figure I'm probably what, 13, 14 at this time.  Now I have a sister who's older, three years older than me. So that put her like 16, 17. And she was—had a car and was gone more, so it was really me at home a lot with him and I was the babysitter a lot. 

00:05:00 Nikki Donnelly 

And because I spent so much time with him, I understood his language best, so I became like his little translator, and he was just attached to me all the time and he used to go like, to the zoo with me and my girlfriends. Once I started, you know, driving my friends, they just all loved my brother and we—so we spent a lot a lot of times he was just welcome kind of wherever I went. 

00:05:28 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah, yeah. And then we started traveling more together. He loves country music and rodeos, and so we'd go travel. I was living in California at the time, but we’d travel all up and down California to Chris LeDoux was our favorite. 

00:05:48 Nikki Donnelly 

He was just my sidekick most of my teenage years, you know, so. 

00:05:53 Johnandrew Slominski 

Robby, what were some of the adventures you and your sister had when you were kids? 

00:06:00 Robby Donnelly 

Well, we went to theme parks. 

00:06:05 Robby Donnelly 

And did road trips. 

00:06:10 Nikki Donnelly 

What was our? What was the theme park that we used to go to? 

00:06:15 Robby Donnelly 

Magic Mountain. 

00:06:16 Nikki Donnelly 

Magic Mountain in near kind of Southern California area? Yep. 

00:06:20 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:06:23 Nikki Donnelly 

When you were little, we used to go rent a car. But what kind of car? 

00:06:27 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah, rent a car. 

00:06:31 Robby Donnelly 

Convertible. Yeah. 

00:06:34 Nikki Donnelly 

Yep, and where were some places that we went? Do you remember? 

00:06:39 Robby Donnelly 

We went to Vegas and Reno. 

00:06:45 Nikki Donnelly 

We went to Vegas and Reno and we did also go to Denver. 

00:06:47 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. Yeah, we went to Denver. 

00:06:51 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah, but, but Vegas and Reno were more fun, I'm sure, than Denver, huh? 

00:06:55 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:06:57 Nikki Donnelly 

What do you call—what do you call Vegas?  

00:06:59 Robby Donnelly 

My spending zone. 

00:07:01 Nikki Donnelly 

My spending zone, he says. 

00:07:05 Johnandrew Slominski 

Nikki, when you're talking with other people about their childhood experiences as a neurotypical kid with a neurodiverse sibling, do you find that your and Robby's experiences are unique, or is that pretty much par for the course? 

00:07:22 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah, yeah, you know, and I'm very involved in the sibling community and I find there are several people that mirror that that I've met, but a lot of people that were closer in age to their sibling, so they had a very different experience where I had pretty much a typical childhood until I was 11-ish. 

00:07:51 Nikki Donnelly 

And then, so I feel like I was a little more aware. You know, I never remember having a conversation about it, like my brother having a disability, he was just my brother and I loved him, you know? So, but yeah, definitely unique experiences growing up in a household like that. So, benefits and challenges both. 

00:08:14 Johnandrew Slominski 

So, you shared this unique childhood where you're separated by about a decade, and I imagine that your family had a really big part in shaping that. What were things like at home for you and Robby? 

00:08:28 Nikki Donnelly 

My family is absolutely incredible inclusively, you know, he was never different and my mom actually will say that that was the best thing that ever happened is him getting, not getting the true diagnosis till he was seven because she never changed her expectations of him. You know, we had a big, big family. We all lived in the same community where I grew up and you know there would be 50 of us at my grandparents’ house for any holiday or birthday or something. And he was always there and included. And so I don't, like, nobody really treated him different.  

00:09:15 Nikki Donnelly 

So now you know, he—there were very clear issues with, you know, when younger cousins and with him biting them all the time and you know we had to accommodate. It wasn't all rose gardens, but yeah, it was just, it was just kind of the nature of my family. 

00:09:37 Johnandrew Slominski 

You mentioned that you were involved in some of Robby's therapies when he was little and you were a teenager. What do you remember from being part of that? 

00:09:47 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah, I remember, I just specifically, I'm assuming that it was a a speech pathologist or, you know, somewhere in the speech realm where like he would go to the cabinet in the kitchen when he wanted something to drink and he put his hand up and point and the therapist would tell me, like, imitate the word cup for him. If you know, because I knew what he wanted, you know, I could, I could read him like nothing. 

00:10:20 Nikki Donnelly 

And so that's, that's the one like kind of core memory that stands out to me. I remember just playing a lot. I know there wasn't. You know, I'm an early interventionist, so I know that there was intentionality behind all of the play. I just, it wasn't specifically highlighted, you know, my specialty is behavior and I think, you know, learning at such a young age that behavior is communication and how to facilitate that communication. You know, when I went into the field of early ed, I was like, wait like everybody doesn't understand this, you know, it was just, it was just absolutely second nature to me. 

00:11:08 Johnandrew Slominski 

There was a time when the two of you lived together as adults, and Robby, you had a big responsibility. What was that? 

00:11:19 Robby Donnelly 

When we used to live together, I think it was run the car through the carwash. 

00:11:30 Nikki Donnelly 

Oh yeah, we used to go to the car wash a lot, huh?  

00:11:32 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:11:35 Nikki Donnelly 

Yep, Robby likes cars too. 

00:11:38 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:11:40 Nikki Donnelly 

We call Robby when, when he lived with me, he was my fleet manager and then he moved to Alabama with my parents and now I have to pump my own fuel and I have to monitor my own, go to service appointments by myself. 

00:12:00 Johnandrew Slominski 

I want to ask you more about that period of time when you're living together. What was your family dynamic like at that point? 

00:12:08 Nikki Donnelly 

You know, my kids grew up with him and probably 2010, 2011, I was actually looking to buy a house. My parents were preparing to retire. So, we actually bought—we called it our compound—together where there's like the big main house, and then there was like a 1200 square foot apartment on the same property.  My parents moved into the apartment and Robbie moved in with me and my kids. So my daughter was probably a freshman, and my son, well, my daughter was, probably 14. My son was 12 at the time. So they—a lot of their well, all of their teenage years. He lived with us. 

00:12:56 Nikki Donnelly 

So we and we, we did that intentionally, you know, so that when my parents retired and they wanted to travel, my dad drove truck and they had bought this truck and this very luxurious, I call it condo on wheels, to travel through their retirement with and they did. They were gone months and months and months at a time, so we did not have to disrupt Robby. 

00:13:27 Nikki Donnelly 

He just, he lived with me, you know, basically, in my house. And then my parents could travel whenever they wanted to and things were taken care of. 

00:13:38 Johnandrew Slominski 

What did it mean to your family to have this arrangement where your parents have the freedom to travel, there's this unique opportunity for multi-generational living, and you're all contributing to a consistent way of life for Robby? 

00:13:55 Nikki Donnelly 

I, you know, I really—it really meant a lot to me for my parents to be able to enjoy their retirement because I feel, you know, growing up I was aware of how hard my mom was fighting for my brother and dealing with the food allergy. 

00:14:18 Nikki Donnelly 

You can't have dairy, and my mom being told like she was going to quack doctors because at the time they didn't—the knowledge of how food allergies impact behavior was not there and then having a psychologist tell my mom to put him in an institution, that she had two girls that that needed her attention and so forth. And like all of that, my mom had to fight against. So I really, really—it meant a lot for me. And I focused more on my mom. My dad drove truck, so he was gone most of the week. So yeah, a lot of it fell on my mom. 

00:15:07 Nikki Donnelly 

And we joked that my brother had three mothers because between me, my mom and my sister at the house all week. Yeah, he was highly supervised so. 

00:15:20 Johnandrew Slominski 

You're describing these uniquely wonderful family relationships that are full of values, both implicit and explicit.  And I'm wondering, where do you think these values came from? I mean, you give a lot of credit to your parents, but do you know what shaped their worldview? 

00:15:43 Nikki Donnelly 

Well, I attribute it to my grandparents because it had already happened within my family, just kind of in a different realm. My grandmother is my blood grandmother. My blood grandfather passed away when my mom was in high school. 

00:16:00 Nikki Donnelly 

So, my—who I know as my grandfather and my grandmother were married actually one year after my parents got married. So, it was—we joke it was the Brady Bunch. My grandparents don't have children together. So they each brought in and then adopted. each other's children, and they are very adamant about family is family is family.  

00:16:32 Nikki Donnelly 

I remember, I'm thinking I was probably around 10 years old, when my I think it was—my mom sat me down and like explained, I must have been asking questions at this time, but explained like this aunt is your blood aunt. This aunt is not, you know, or this uncle is your blood uncle, this uncle is not.  And you know at that age I had no idea because everybody treated us the same. Everybody was the same, you know it was. 

00:17:02 Nikki Donnelly 

So that strong, I'll attribute that to my grandparents and their strong sense of family. And it really just carried right over into my brother. You know, there was never, there was never any question that he wasn't coming to anything, you know, and you know I being so active in the sibling community, I hear—I didn't even realize till later that that's not always the case. You know, there's. I've heard many stories. 

00:17:31 Nikki Donnelly 

Like we can't. Our family doesn't want us there or anything like that, you know? So now you know, as Robby's gotten older, you know, if he doesn't come to a family function or something, it's by his choice. You know, he's—we just respect. We respect that. 

00:17:54 Nikki Donnelly 

And that actually brings me back to one of the most I think pivotal moments for us, with Robby growing up. I remember we were at my grandparents and he would get really overwhelmed there when he was younger and you know, would bite and hit and you know have big meltdowns and so forth. But I'll never forget the first time he came up and he said,  “It's too loud. I need to go home.” 

00:18:26 Nikki Donnelly 

And my mom was like, let's go, you know, because it was such, it was such a pivotal moment here he was communicating his needs, right, and we were able to follow his—and follow through on what his needs were.  

00:18:45 Nikki Donnelly 

I feel very, very fortunate to have been in the family that I was in and to have been with, you know, really my mom. I attribute a lot to my mom. But my dad is great, too. Don't get me wrong, but my mom was a general education 3rd grade teacher, 4th grade teacher. So she was somewhat educated in the area.  But, she—to recognize like he's communicating the need to us, we need to affirm this communication. 

00:19:24 Johnandrew Slominski 

Both of you have been very involved with the Sibling Leadership Network, which supports siblings of individuals with disability on an individual level, while also working with a larger community view in terms of advocacy and public policy.  What has the Sibling Leadership Network meant to you? I imagine you've met siblings from all walks of life. 

00:19:49 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah, yeah, I've heard probably the whole range. I've been involved with the sibling leadership network for 10 to 12 years now, but I have learned to appreciate the family that I grew up in and the circumstances for my brother. 

00:20:13 Nikki Donnelly 

And then also, you know the advocacy, the advocacy piece and so forth, I because we're so close. I just, I have high expectations for him and for systems that support people with disabilities. You know, he doesn't have a job. He doesn't, you know. 

00:20:39 Nikki Donnelly 

He was right on like that first wave of the increase of autism. So the supports weren't there the, you know, a BCBA wasn't even a thing yet, you know. And there wasn't—there just was not as he was aging out of the school system the supports to help him transition into a job He could have held a job—he could have had a very meaningful job. But so, coming together as a sibling community has really helped me in focusing that advocacy and so forth because we all want quality systems to care for our siblings, you know. 

00:21:25 Nikki Donnelly 

And a very small portion of that is selfish because we as siblings end up being the ones either caretaking, care managing, you know, whatever. As our parents age and can no longer have that role, we tend to take that on. So we've fought for like siblings to be included in Family Medical Leave Act, right? Not we're not in every state, right? 

00:21:50 Nikki Donnelly 

So I feel you know. 

00:21:52 Johnandrew Slominski 

And Oregon does. 

00:21:54 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah, yeah, Oregon is, that's—I just moved here a year and a half ago. That was the first thing I asked in my on-boarding at HR like, does that include siblings? And they're like, I don't know. Nobody's ever asked me that question. So I went and looked it up, and it does so. But yeah, there's states. I mean, I could not imagine having, you know, if my brother was medically fragile or something and I was always having to, you know, do hospital stays or anything like that. And I mean, I wouldn't be able work. I mean, I've learned so much about myself from being connected with the sibling community and there's been a ton of research done on us and learning the traits of us as siblings. Some of the good traits that we have and some of them maybe not so positive traits that we have. 

00:22:44 Johnandrew Slominski 

Does anything ring true for you from this sibling research? 

00:22:46 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah. So probably the biggest thing for me is, you know, I think because I was a little bit older, I was very sensitive and I saw really how like exhausted my mom was in fighting for my brother, you know, working full time and, you know, and she was essentially a single mom during the week when my dad wasn't there. 

00:23:17 Nikki Donnelly 

So, and I don’t fault my dad at all, it was his job. That's what he did, you know? So—but she was exhausted fighting for services for him and I think I saw that. I don't ever remember really being aware of that at that young age, but as I've gotten older now and I've learned a lot, one thing that I've learned about myself is I really have a hard time asking for help.  Right. 

00:23:49 Nikki Donnelly 

And I think that stems back to, like, knowing that my mom was exhausted and I didn't want to be any more of a burden, you know? And again, this was all subconsciously, never did I think this at all, but now I've had to really, really consciously work through, like, it's OK to ask for help and then, and then to let those know around me, like, hey, if I ask for help, it's kind of a big deal. So you can't just be like, oh, I don't have time or something like, you need to, like, stop and be like I would really like to do that. But here's, you know, kind of saying so because I can be super sensitive to that. I'm way better than I used to be, you know, but I—before I learned about the sibling traits I just thought like people were rude or like, not everybody doesn't—people will just throw around asking for help like it's nothing?  You know, like, I didn't understand how I was different. 

00:24:59 Johnandrew Slominski 

So, you've had this process of self-discovery as a sibling. What do you then tell others who might be new to the sibling leadership network and starting to make their own discoveries? 

00:25:11 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah. Yeah, we have, like, a whole one hour, hour and a half presentation that we do on all the sibling traits. You know, there's always the, the big one about, you know, being parentified when you know, having to help. And but that's also-- 

00:25:32 Nikki Donnelly 

You know, taken to the extreme, it's parentification. But taken as the positive, it's—we're mature. We can handle responsibility. You know we can. So it's really your mindset and how you manage it and. 

00:25:48 Nikki Donnelly 

When we give presentations to families and service providers and so forth. We—I always like to highlight like, you don't—you don't have to do like something every day as a parent to support the sibling like myself.   

00:26:12 Nikki Donnelly 

My mom—I look back and realized now how much I cherished these days when I was younger and she would do one day a year where it was just me and my mom, and we'd go over to the coast in California and go to outlet and we go like school shopping there. And it was just she and I for that one day. 

00:26:35 Nikki Donnelly 

Not even with my older sister. And then she would do the same thing with my sister. So, I don't know if that's why she did it. You know, if she had that parent guilt that most of her energy was going toward my brother rightfully so, you know, but. 

00:26:53 Nikki Donnelly 

I don't know. I will have to ask her that when she comes. But you know, I tell parents that you know, for me it was just one day, one day a year, that I knew my mom would see me as me and not like the helper or the older sister or the so forth. So, yeah.  Yeah. 

00:27:15 Johnandrew Slominski 

And there's an entire ripple effect through your family, right? 

00:27:20 Nikki Donnelly 

It's a lot because you know my daughter, I had to sit her down at 8 years old and tell her what a disability was because she grew up around Mom coaching Special Olympics her whole life, right? And she wanted to—she always wanted to do Special Olympics. And I told her you had to be 8 and then at 8 years old I had to tell her, you know, like she literally saw no difference. So. And she's now, she's now in the field. She's a school social worker. So. 

00:27:52 Johnandrew Slominski 

I'm curious, what did you tell your daughter at that time? 

00:27:57 Nikki Donnelly 

Just that people's brains are different. And you know, there's just differences in what a disability means that, you know, some people can't do things like other people did, you know. 

00:28:12 Nikki Donnelly 

Now, that's 20 years ago. I would probably explain it much different now, but still the brain—that the brain’s different, same way where when Robby started coming and speaking at university classes that I taught with me and we still do but, 

00:28:32 Nikki Donnelly 

I had to explain to him what autism was, you know, nobody had ever sat Robby down and said, hey, you're autistic and I use the word autistic because that's what he's identified as. So I've explicitly asked him, do you want to be, you know, I said to you, you're just my brother. But when I introduce you in this context of talking about autism, do you want me to say you're my autistic brother, or my brother with autism? And he said, autistic brother so. 

00:29:06 Robby Donnelly 

Brother with autism. 

00:29:09 Nikki Donnelly 

Oh, OK, maybe it changed, huh? You used to tell me that you wanted me to call you my autistic brother. 

00:29:11 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:29:17 Nikki Donnelly 

But now it's my brother with autism. 

00:29:19 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:29:20 Nikki Donnelly 

OK. Good to know. I will change that then, huh? I will start referring to you as my brother with autism, but I much just prefer to refer to you as my brother. 

00:29:22 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:29:34 Johnandrew Slominski 

Robby, when you go to conferences or you go to universities with Nikki, what kinds of things do you do? 

00:29:42 Robby Donnelly 

Umm I give like public speeches. 

00:29:50 Nikki Donnelly 

Public speaking. 

00:29:51 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah, probably speaking. 

00:29:53 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah. And what do you talk about? 

00:29:55 Robby Donnelly 

Ah—I make speech about people with autism. Yeah, it's people that are teachers or people that want to be teachers. 

00:30:13 Johnandrew Slominski 

And what do you want people to know when you give your speeches? 

00:30:19 Robby Donnelly 

Everyone's brain works different. 

00:30:24 Nikki Donnelly 

Different.  Yeah, yeah. And then we usually talk about, like, what are some cool things about having autism. 

00:30:34 Nikki Donnelly 

So what's? What's something? Yeah, what's really what's really cool about having autism? 

00:30:39 Robby Donnelly 

I can memorize asong. 

00:30:41 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah.  I always say, before like Shazam and all these things back in the yeah, back in the 80s, he used to be all my friends’ Shazam. 

00:30:53 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:30:55 Nikki Donnelly 

They would literally call me and say one line of a country song and he would tell them the song, the artist, the CD it was on, and the track number so we would frequently get those phone calls. 

00:31:10 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. Yeah, we don't have CDs anymore. 

00:31:16 Nikki Donnelly 

Nope.  Those are some of the cool things. What's—what's something that you would like to do that you can't necessarily?  Something not cool about having autism? 

00:31:30 Robby Donnelly 

Well, I can’t drive a—I can’t get a license.  

00:31:36 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah, because your autism—for you and your brain, makes it so that you can't get a car or drive a car, huh? Well, you can drive a car perfectly fine, but you can't get a license. Yeah. 

00:31:44 Robby Donnelly 

No. 

00:31:47 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:31:56 Johnandrew Slominski 

Years after you first started traveling together, you still take trips, and I understand you had a big trip to the Sibling Leadership Conference a few years ago. What was that like? 

00:32:07 Nikki Donnelly 

We did a trip where we flew into Minneapolis and went to the Sibling Leadership Network conference. And they had a 2-day conference every other year. So, we flew into that, and then he loves trains still and he loves cars, especially Ford trucks. And so, we flew into the conference and then we took Amtrak to Chicago. We did a couple days in Chicago, and then we took Amtrak further more into Detroit, into the Ford factory. And yeah, it was just like his dream trip. But in Chicago, oddly, he said he wanted to go to a Cubs game. I don't think he ever watched baseball. And it's like, like our family were big baseball people. But he wanted to go to a Cubs game. 

00:32:54 Nikki Donnelly 

So, we get on and we go get on the subway, the train, the 8 or whatever train they have there. It's called but it was packed. Packed in there and he's not real good at like, spatial awareness, you know? So he's in there and I could see him as we're riding the train and people are getting on and off and like, bumping into them and the train is jerking and he's like over-exaggerating every jerk you know, and bumping into people. And I could hear his tone getting higher and higher and higher. Right. And it's a Robby that is very, very rarely seen when he's he starts to get escalated now as a you know, 40-year-old man. 

00:34:48 Nikki Donnelly 

But I was like oh shoot. I had to turn back on that educator mode and start looking for supports for him in this situation. And you know, I, I quickly started scanning the train car for visuals and found the visual of like where each stop was. 

00:34:10 Nikki Donnelly 

And I would, so I pointed out to him, we're here and we're going to go here, you know? So we have 5 more, you know, and just like, this is just all you got to do is hold it together for this long. But then then we're. Then we're off. So. 

00:34:27 Nikki Donnelly 

So then it just switched to whenever we went to a stop, he would just loudly on the train announce the name of the stop that they were out at and three more to, you know, whatever stuff we were getting off at. But yeah, so that was that was kind of a little bit of a wake-up call for me as an adult with him that oh, that's still in there. You know, when he is pushed and is in a new situation and doesn't know, like, how to get out of this situation. He he would still be pushed to that. That can come. So we left the game early so the the train ride back wouldn't be so bad. 

00:35:16 Johnandrew Slominski 

Robby, what was your favorite part of that trip with Nikki? 

00:35:21 Robby Donnelly 

The Henry Ford Factory museum. 

00:35:24 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah, we went to the, we did the factory tour, remember? Do you remember what they were doing at the factory? 

00:35:31 Robby Donnelly 

They were making Ford vehicles. 

00:35:36 Nikki Donnelly 

Yep, you got to make them watch them make the—build the trucks. Yeah. On. Do you remember what it was that they built it on? 

00:35:47 Robby Donnelly 

Assembly line. 

00:35:48 Nikki Donnelly 

Uh-huh. 

00:35:49 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:35:52 Johnandrew Slominski 

What should someone do if they want to connect with the sibling leadership network? 

00:35:57 Nikki Donnelly 

There's the national Sibling Leadership Network, and that's sibling leadership.org is the website. Then underneath that are all of our state chapters right there. There is not yet a chapter in every single state. There was not one in Oregon until I came here. So we've been around about a year and a half now in Oregon. 

00:36:17 Nikki Donnelly 

But before that, I was really involved in California. If there isn't a chapter, then if you’re a sibling and you want to start one, that's what I did. You know the odds are that someone—if you reach out to the Sibling Leadership Network there the odds are there's probably people in the state that have expressed interest, and they can reach out to get connected. 

00:36:46 Johnandrew Slominski 

Nikki, how would you describe the impact that Robby has had on your life? 

00:36:53 Nikki Donnelly 

Robby keeps it real for me, right, you know? And if if I'm wrong about something, he'll tell me. 

00:37:02 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:37:03 Nikki Donnelly 

Right, and I just think overall he's just such a kind, happy guy to be around.  

00:37:12 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:37:15 Nikki Donnelly 

You know, our relationship and growing up with Robby has really taught me a lot about what's important in life.  

00:37:22 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:37:24 Nikki Donnelly 

You know, seeing him, you know, work so hard at learning to advocate for yourself, remember? 

00:37:31 Robby Donnelly 

Yep, advocate. 

00:37:32 Nikki Donnelly 

Yep, Yep. Just, you know, learning to talk was a big challenge.  

00:37:26 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:37:38 Nikki Donnelly 

For Robby and I tell him, you know, because of because of him, I'm in the field that I'm in and everything I know I learned from him, you know. So I mean, I have lots of education also, but really he taught me everything that I know. 

00:37:57 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:37:57 Nikki Donnelly 

And now I get to go help other families and it's and it's all because of you. 

00:38:00 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:38:03 Nikki Donnelly 

Yeah, see all these people in the world you’ved helped, huh? 

00:38:05 Robby Donnelly 

Yeah. 

00:38:08 Nikki Donnelly 

Yep. 

00:38:11 Johnandrew Slominski 

My guests today have been Robby and Nikki Donnelly, brother and sister extraordinaire. 

00:38:18 Johnandrew Slominski 

If you want to learn more about the Sibling Leadership Network, visit siblingleadership.org. 

00:38:27 Johnandrew Slominski 

Nikki, Robby thank you both so much for the conversation today. 

00:38:33 Robby Donnelly 

Alright. Bye. 

00:38:35 Nikki Donnelly 

Bye. 

00:38:38 Johnandrew Slominski 

You've been listening to the Autism Annex podcast presented by Star Autism Support. I'm Johnandrew Slominski. 

00:38:47 Johnandrew Slominski 

If you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, I'd invite you to do so, and to share the podcast with someone who you think would enjoy it too. 

00:38:56 Johnandrew Slominski 

We have an exciting lineup of episodes coming soon. Next month I'll be speaking with Dr. Temple Grandin about her research, writing, life story, and more. I hope you'll join us. 

00:39:09 Johnandrew Slominski 

In the mean time, take good care of yourself and one another.