Hi there. You do not know me yet, but I hope to get to know you, and for you to get to know me. My name is Taffy Watts, and I am a mother and have been a teacher for twenty-two years.
In my time as a mother, I have loved every moment of it. I do not know what it was about looking down at my daughter for the first time, but I have never felt so excited to have something so perfect.
Teaching has also been such an integral part of who I am, not only as a person, but as someone who has seen things go very wrong. Especially with our most precious and vulnerable babies, the ones with disorders and disabilities.
I just kept asking myself: why is this happening? How is this going to be fixed? Then I realized I had to be the answer, because I knew something could change, but no one was doing it.
I am getting ahead of myself. Let us start where we need to start: when it all began.
At the age of three, my daughter drowned, and was revived. After that, things really started to change. Clothing became horrific for her. The touch of it against her skin hurt her. She began having outbursts. Bathing became a time of trauma and severe anxiety, for both myself and for my daughter.
Things started happening, and I did not know what was going on. I thought, maybe this is just a phase. I kept telling myself that, even as a teacher who knew there could be something wrong, because I did not want to face it. Maybe it is not there if I ignore it. But I could not ignore it, because it was so intense at times.
I took her to the doctor, and she was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder. It made a lot of sense. Her food palate had gone from many foods to very few. Her tactile senses were on high alert. Noises began to bother her. Being touched bothered her more than it ever had. She became more withdrawn. More quiet.
I could see these things changing, but not for the better, and I knew we had to do something. I learned that occupational therapy could help with eating, and with other sensory needs. Of course, she fought it, tooth and nail. I do not know if every child fights therapy this hard, but it seemed like independence took over, whether it was a good independence or a hard one.
In fifth grade she started getting severely bullied. I noticed she had stopped doing things she used to enjoy, even before the bullying began, and then the bullying turned into cyberbullying. Girls, eleven years old, were telling her to end her life. It was traumatic just to hear it, and I could only imagine what her little brain must have been feeling in those moments. There was more, though. She was not gaining weight. In four years she gained only five pounds. A friend recommended I call a hotline for NEDA, the National Eating Disorder Association. They told me she might have ARFID, Avoidant or Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. There are a few ways it is diagnosed: a fear of choking, avoidance of most foods and textures, or a lack of interest in eating at all. She had the avoidance, and no interest.
At twelve years old, she was sixty pounds. She was not moving from her bed or the couch, and the resistance to help was brutal. She would get rigid. She would hide. She would crawl under things. If we got firm with her at all, it was almost as if she became afraid of us. Suicidal ideation and self-harm began. Those were the things I was seeing, and I just kept thinking: what is causing all of this?
Then came new diagnoses: major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and ADHD. She started getting in trouble at school, threatening other students, lying on the floor in the hallway.
Then it all came tumbling down. The therapies were not working. I was terrified. Therapists recommended all day therapy, which did not work very well with a work schedule, and I had to quit teaching. I know that has happened to so many people. I felt like I was losing everything, but I had to keep fighting for her.
It has been scary. I do not know how else to say it. I know we are all scared, all trying our best to be the best caregivers we can be. But the dysregulation is when everything really starts. Their minds go into a mode I can only describe as chaos. Not because they are "crazy," but because in that moment, they do not know themselves except for one enormous feeling. And it happens anywhere. In a store. In a restaurant. In school, where you are not there to protect them.
That is one of the scariest parts for me: feeling like I cannot protect my child.
So I started to consider what I could do. I believe proactivity matters more than almost anything else right now, and we are missing so much about our own children: their patterns, their triggers. How do we get that? I kept thinking: an hour is not enough. There are a hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week. One hour of therapy cannot show you the whole child.
I kept asking: what if there was something that could truly see the child, not just observe, but be a proactive friend who steps in before the dysregulation even starts? I just started talking about it out loud. And finally, I said it: this is what we need.
SEPA Babies. SEPA stands for Sensory, Educational, Productivity, and Adaptability. That is what I wanted: something that could be a part of your life more than anything ever has before.
When I say there are a hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week, and one hour of therapy is not enough, this is where PingoPongo comes in. PingoPongo is there to help close the gap, to be present in the hundred and sixty-seven hours of quiet, when you are going through what the therapist will never see, and will never fully understand from a story you are recounting after the fact.
That is why I am building SEPA Babies, and why our first companion is called PingoPongo. I am not going to promise you the world on this page. What I can tell you is what we are working toward: a gentle companion a child can bond with, that supports emotion regulation in everyday life, and that helps the people who love that child understand what their days are really like. We are early, and we are building carefully, with families and clinicians beside us.
I am so looking forward to getting to know you, to building a village of women, men, and people who can talk to each other, communicate, build, and bond. Please think about joining the village. We have nothing to lose.
Thank you.