Dawnmarie Gaivin on Spelling, Apraxia & Building a Principled Movement

Podcast: The David Kaufer Podcast: The Lighter Side of the Spectrum · David Kaufer

Opublikowano: 2026-06-05

David welcomes Dawnmarie Gaivin, executive director of Spellers Freedom Foundation and co-author of The Spellers Guidebook, recalling how her intensive sessions with his son Stone created a major “paradigm shift.” Gaivin shares her background in nursing and parenting two autistic sons who lost speech, her early focus on communication and literacy, and how discovering spelling/typing for communication—grounded in addressing motor planning differences like apraxia—changed her family’s trajectory and led to work that has reached over 1,000 spellers. They discuss the origins of her former business name Transcending Apraxia, the role of the film Spellers and the book Under...