Charlie Massey is one of the millions of young children who’ve been diagnosed with ADHD. But before his diagnosis, little Charlie was a spirited two-year-old with bursts of uncontrolled energy that could get him into trouble at school.

“His teachers would call and say ‘Charlie had trouble keeping his hands to himself again,’” says his mom, Bright Horizons Client Relations Director Gretchen Massey. “The other kids didn’t always understand.”

So began a journey that would require tests and specialists and the unyielding support of child care center staff and coworkers who would become a much bigger part of the family’s story than just teachers and colleagues. “The center was really the base where we started to create this community for Charlie,” says Gretchen who joined Bright Horizons eight years ago. “And that community still exists to this day.”

For Gretchen and Charlie’s other mom, it’s been a roller coaster of worry, concern, and advocacy. And Gretchen sat down to talk about all of it -- Charlie, her job, and what it means to work at a company where work and family go hand in hand.

Lisa: You came to Bright Horizons in 2015. What brought you here?

Gretchen: I had Charlie when I was 39 and came here when he was almost two. I was looking to make a career change. As a mom with the relatively new job of balancing a family with work, I was so excited to work here, and really excited about the child care discount. The stars really aligned. I started at Bright Horizons on January 5th and Charlie started at the Atlantic Station center the same day.

Lisa: So…how’d it go?

Gretchen: Mrs. Pat (King-McDowell) and Mrs. Glenda (Johnson), the center director and assistant director at the time, were absolute angels. They started to mention minor incidents and caught us in the hallway with a few concerns. His other mother and I had actually noticed things at home, too. We called Charlie our little rabbit because he would get excited and literally start to hop. We thought it was extreme joy and enthusiasm – and it was. But it was also his inner mechanism to respond to energy bursts that we’d later come to understand were part of ADHD. He couldn’t understand how to keep his hands to himself.

Lisa: What was that like?

Gretchen: This is where you really need the support of the center leadership, teachers, and staff, especially because other children didn’t always understand when Charlie got physical. Then the center staff becomes really important. They would monitor and do interventions when needed and they were so good about keeping us in the loop and communicating with us.

Lisa: Did it get easier after that?

Gretchen: The real challenges came after we left the center and Charlie went to kindergarten. We lived through the horrible behavior chart of bad colors and good colors; we lived and died by that chart. One or two days a week, Charlie would get a red or yellow for putting his hands on other kids or because he couldn’t sit still or couldn’t pay attention. Towards the end of his first full year in public school, we started to realize and accept that we needed help.

Lisa: That’s a lot to figure out on your own. Where did you go? How did you get started?

Gretchen: Bright Horizons has a program called Bright Horizons Special Needs [BHSN] that we used to help us research and get organized. That helped us realize we needed to get him tested – and when we did, the diagnosis came back as pretty severe ADHD, maybe dyslexic. At that point, we began talking to his school about 504 plans available to him (verbiage we only understood thanks to BHSN!). We worked with them to start a customized 504 for him, and we also made the personal decision to use medication to help regulate his lack of focus and hyperactivity.

Lisa: And…How’d that go?

Gretchen: Quite simply, it changed our lives. In May of that year, Charlie got student of the month. The success of his 504 experience set us up to get a formal IEP, and that’s when BHSN came to life for us. Since all of this came to light, it’s been our bible for him in public school. It’s been instrumental in helping us understand the differences between private and public school, how to advocate for more financial resources if you opt for private school

Lisa: For a parent whose just starting to support a child, how valuable is that kind of support?

Gretchen: If you haven’t gone through this, you can’t imagine the amount of documentation required. Before 2017, that would have been actual papers in a huge, three-inch binder. Now it’s mostly digital, and BHSN helps us keep all of that together. We are able to capture and upload all of the reporting. It’s also helpful for communication. When we have meetings, all the notes and correspondence go in the digital notebook. And everyone can go there: Charlie’s case manager, special education coordinator, system-wide public school can be copied, our pediatrician – anyone who is on the team. And as his parents, we can decide who sees what information. The platform is something that families can really leverage to document and understand what’s going on with their children and truly advocate for them.

Lisa: How were you doing through all this?

Gretchen: Assisting a child with special needs can be a very lonely experience. So the support wasn’t only for Charlie. We thought our child was broken. He’d gotten thrown out of after-school programs. It was embarrassing -- very real and raw. Going through it alone was exhausting. But then we found people at work who understood – who not only got it as educators and professionals in the field, but personally. I had the support of Bright Horizons Employee Advisory Groups [EAG] – as a working mom, a member of the LGBTQ community, and the group for differently abled. Having those resources really ratcheted things up. I found a community and also a mentor in a colleague I could talk to. When I presented my story to the differently abled EAG, they all understood. I realized I wasn’t alone.

Lisa: What about your job? How hard was it to work and do all of this at the same time?

Gretchen: From the beginning, I had an open door with my manager, Christine Kratz, and with the Atlantic Station center leadership to talk about the things going on with Charlie. So his other mother and I weren’t in this purgatory by ourselves. This was especially important later when my mother was going through chemo treatments for colon cancer diagnosed in July 2019. When she passed way, I took about six weeks. I’ve seen colleagues take over for employees so their people can do what they need to do for their families. It was such a great illustration of this company and how we rise to the occasion of supporting others when it is needed.

Today Gretchen says Charlie is making progress and thriving in public school. “When I say thriving, I really mean that from the social aspect,” she says. “He’s the governor of his third-grade class. But it’s been a struggle academically. And we’re using the special needs platform again to potentially help guide us to a private school that can deliver more one-on-one instruction, which we have found he needs to be successful.“ Still, the foundation Gretchen has gotten from the company has been invaluable to her on all levels -- as an employee, a parent, and a human. And Mrs. Pat and Mrs. Glenda and the rest of her center community continue to inform how she and Charlie’s other mother parent him.

“We have always loved Charlie’s quirks and nuances – but thanks to all of these family supports, we’ve come to view Charlie’s academic style as, ‘differently-abled learning’ -- and that’s how we refer to him. We got that from Bright Horizons. They helped us to chill out and really love and appreciate his uniqueness. For people in a family situation like mine with young children,” she says, “this is the place to be, both as an employee and a customer. I’ve seen it happen with other colleagues. And I’ve really found people respond very favorably to all of life’s surprises.”