FabuRocks Podcast

We had a YouTube channel with a channel intro.  Now what?  We knew we needed to integrate her having fun, content she was interested in, and then incorporate therapy. We asked her what she liked the most out of what she was watching on YouTube.  At that time, gummy videos were trending, and Fabu loved watching these, especially those that showed them making gummies. 

She believed these videos were not only fun but wanted us to do these as a family.  We anticipated she would be as engaged as she was previously during the filming of the intro video.  Actually, we were counting on it!

Our gummy-making journey began!  We went all out.  We knew the success of what we were doing depended on setting the stage and creating a magical experience for Fabu.  We went out and got a new 4k video camera, lights, microphone, built a background, and even bought a movie director clapperboard.  As you can see, for us, it was all in!   Mind you, our only experience making videos was shooting clips really quickly on our cell phones.   We had no idea how to use lighting or how to incorporate audio into the camera.  We clearly needed many crash courses on how to make videos for dummies.  YouTube became our academy, and there we found videos that taught us all these things we had no clue how to do.  This may sound like a big investment, but truly knowing what we know today, our initial investment cost us what today we spend in just a single light. 

After going through many YouTube tutorials and receiving all the new equipment, it was time for our first “professional” video.  We were all so excited! We made final decisions about the gummy-making video's content, and we went out and bought all the ingredients so everything would be ready for film day.  Never in our lives had we bought so many packets of gelatin, so much so that we ended up having to go to several different stores to get all the gelatin we needed. It was A LOT!!!

Film day arrived, and we were ready to go!  After all the tutorials we watched, we were pros and knew how to set up everything from the microphone location, the camera's correct angle, where each of the lights needed to be placed to obtain the best lighting and has no shadows.  We felt like true filmmakers.  

And, of course, nothing went as we imagined. Our first video was making a gummy bar-b-que sauce bottle and took forever to make.  Fabu was interested in making the gummy all about 5 min.  She quickly left us in the kitchen making the gummies while she went to watch TV. 

We had written a script for Fabu to use, but she refused to follow the script and instead wanted to use her talking Olaf, a toy that was popular at that time, as her sidekick that she would talk to.  We let her do that so that she would not get upset and lose interest as we were already too far invested in the project and feared she would shut down and not want to participate, as this was her default.

We let her improvise and explain what she was doing and what was going on.  We asked her to express herself as best as she could.  This is where the problems started.  There were certain words unfamiliar to her that took her a long time to learn and remember so she would be able to repeat them.  This triggered her to become frustrated as we would not let her use words that were easy for her to say or things that did not make sense.  We by this point, we're exhausted after working all day and hours spent making several batches of gummies, leaving us with our patience much stretched.  We always tried to keep it fun and turn all of her mistakes into jokes to be a good experience.  The truth was that it was becoming late, we were running low on patience, and neither Fabu nor ourselves could continue, so we ended the filming not knowing if what we had done was a failure or a success.   Not knowing if we would ever do that again. 

From the moment Fabu started vocalizing, she seemed to have her own language, which sometimes only FabuMom would understand.  Fabu has always been a happy kid and expressed herself by hugging people.  She did not often get frustrated when she was not understood.  When asked a question she did not understand, she would answer in her own way, smile, hug you, and you clueless as to what she had just said.

We thought the delay initially was because we are a bilingual family, which not only did we speak to her in both English and Spanish, but so did her grandparents and extended family.  We believed Fabu was just confused by both languages, and it was just taking her a little longer. 

Fabu had reached her walking milestone at an earlier age than most other children.  Her pediatrician had said that oftentimes when this happens, other milestones such as language take a little longer to develop. 

Fabu did not start attending daycare until she was 3 years old.  Fabu’s grandparents spent most of the day with her while FabuParents were at school and work. We believed this also had to do with the delay in speech because they catered to her every need, and she did not need to say much to obtain what she wanted and more.  All she would need to do is point a finger, and she would get whatever she wanted.   We believed that she would immediately catch up to where she needed to be concerning her speech as soon as she started school. 

Despite her lack of vocabulary and speech, which she did not understand, Fabu always made sure you understood her by her gestures and acting out what she wanted to say.

Fabu was formally diagnosed with speech delay at 4 years old.

She started receiving speech therapy 2 x week. 

We were hopeful that with therapy, she would quickly overcome the delay. We knew that therapy needed to be aggressive and agreed to 2 x week.

Her speech therapist was going to Fabu’s daycare 2 x week.  She would get pulled out of her class for each session.  We were hopeful that Fabu would obtain results quickly. 

Fabu went through 3 different therapists within 2 years.  Each of them had the same feedback:  Fabu was a happy and friendly kid who lacked interest during a session, was normally not engaged, did not pay attention, and rejected participating in therapy overall.  Fabu’s improvement was minimal during this time, and we became increasingly more concerned.  

As the first grade was just around the corner, we became worried about all the possible issues that Fabu could face if she did not significantly improve her speech, such as social issues, behavior issues, anxiety, and depression.  This was when we decided to take matters into our own hands. 

Based on the therapists' feedback, our first task was to look for something that she was interested in, wanted to be a part of, and thought was fun.  It was time to get creative!

We tested her level of interest with many things she liked at that time.  We looked for things she found entertaining and was engaged with for long periods of time.  We found that she enjoyed many things but most did not capture her attention for long enough. 

We discovered that her most captured attention was when she watched several kid-friendly YouTube channels and their content.  She kept bugging us about letting her have her own YouTube channel, something we had never even considered.  In a moment of appearing to entertain her idea, we asked her to use her tablet and record herself and make a video of what she would like for us to put on YouTube.  We never imagined she would actually go and do it.  To our surprise, she made several videos which showed her expressing herself better than we had ever seen or heard her before.  This showed us that she had really focused her attention on making those videos, which was something she was interested in and seemed to provide some hope.

We continued to entertain this idea and keep our promise of creating a YouTube channel for her and, with a camera, headed to a park to film her official INTRO video.  After we saw how motivated and engaged she was during filming, we decided to create a YouTube channel for Fabu named FabuRocks.   Fabu, short for Fabulous, has been her nickname since she was born, and Rocks came from her obsession with collecting rocks from wherever we went, where she had a story for each rock she had. 

FabuRocks was created and inspired by our daughter FABU to help her with speech delay, learning disabilities, and ADHD at home.

At the age of 4, FABU was diagnosed with speech delay and immediately started going to speech therapy twice a week. After 2 years and minimal improvements, FABU was in 1st grade and testing 3-grade levels below in speech and reading.

By 2nd grade, FABU showed ADHD and learning disabilities symptoms such as dyslexia and language processing issues. An IEP (Individualized Education Plan) was developed to help meet her needs and goals at school.

We decided to take matters into our own hands as we faced our biggest fear: FABU in 1st grade, with a considerable delay in communication, knowing that this could lead to or trigger further mental health issues later in life we wanted to avoid.

This led us to use gaming, unboxing videos, and live streaming as the main therapeutic tool that produced quicker and more significant improvement than we ever imagined.

Now that FABU is older, she is no longer embarrassed for us, as a family, to openly discuss the obstacles she faces daily. After seeing her significant improvement over the years, she now understands the importance of being verbal about her disabilities, what we do and how we do it to empower others like her.

Currently, FABU is in 6th grade and testing at grade level in reading and vocabulary and getting A’s and B’s in all her classes. She’s social, outspoken, frequently participates in class, and is passionate about Math and literature.

FABU’s accomplishments as a content creator are many, from being the youngest YouTube Gaming Partner at the age of 7 to currently being the Youngest FaceBook Gaming partner and sponsored by several of the biggest name brands in gaming such as Turtle Beach, ROCCAT, and G-Fuel.

She’s the founder and leader of the FabuArmy, a clan that empowers and supports young content creators like herself.

This is why we have decided to create a Podcast, and our goals are to educate parents, create awareness, and for FABU’s voice to be heard as we share our story, how we got here, and where we are headed. We will openly discuss our experiences, methods, techniques, what has worked, what has NOT worked, our frustrations, how we overcome our challenges, and our plans.

We invite you to join us on our daily journey via our YouTube channel, where we post a new video daily, our Twitter updates, our Instagram posts, our website event news, our Discord community, during our FaceBook Gaming live streams, and via our weekly Podcast.

We are excited to announce the launch of Season 1 of the FabuRocks Podcast, on March 22, 2021, exactly 5 years from when we started FabuRocks as a way to help Fabu overcome her speech delay, learning disabilities and ADHD.

We invite you to join us in celebrating this long overdue project that has been created with love in the hopes of providing education, awareness and for Fabu's voice to be heard, as we openly share our story, how we got here and where we are headed.