When it comes to caring for and teaching kids diagnosed with autism, the approach is not one size fits all.
Local therapist assistant, Rachel Harrington, knows that because of the kids she works with everyday so she's getting creative with how she helps them.
Many kids and adults with Autism wear weighted vests to help them feel grounded and to put them at ease, but the typical vests they get are bulky and cumbersome. Harrington pulled out her sewing machine a year ago and started to make some serious changes to help her kids feel more confident and the result has been life-changing.
"To be able to make these weighted vests and to have the reviews say oh my goodness this weighted vest or weighted blanket is changing my child's life it's unbelievable," Harrington said.
She opened a shop on Etsy called The Sensory Project where she sells a variety of weighted apparel like vests, jackets, and even hats.
"All of the kids that we use weighted vests with they are hideous and they look like medical devices," said Harrington. "These kids want to go to school with a vest to make them feel calm but kids are pointing at them and saying 'What is that?', 'Why are you wearing that?'."
One family that uses her products is the Porters.
Jagger Porter is now four years old, but when he was two his parents knew something was different.
"It seemed like as soon as he turned two years old that's when a new door opened where he was really mad and frustrated and realizing that he couldn't tell us what he needed," Alyssa Porter said.
When most two year olds are repeating words, Jagger was silent.
"I just craved to hear his voice and know what it sounded like," Porter said. "I wanted to know what was going on inside of his head."
Later, Jagger got a double diagnosis - autism and global developmental delay. It's been a long road with countless hours of speech therapy and later occupational therapy with therapists like Harrington.
"A couple of times I just want to cry from happiness because you'll be working on a skill for so long with a kid like tying their shoes and they'll master it and you're like oh my gosh," Harrington said.
Jagger wears his vest often.
"It's something that nobody would even think twice about it," Porter said. "It's just a regular cute sweatshirt or vest but it's giving him the input that he needs. It really helped Jagger relax and gave us more tools that we could use in situations where we had no idea what to do before."
While they look like vests or jackets you'd find on the shelves in any store they mean much more than that.
"The main goal is to create confident kids," Harrington said. "That's the biggest thing for me, to make these kids shine in their own skin."