Autumn Reed Earns Recognition For Work With Children, Families

Sometimes, Autumn Reed’s job is to work with tragedy and troubled kids.

Other times, the Central Valley elementary school counselor encounters the most basic of human dilemmas.

Like the time a fifth-grader came to her after his buddies said his girlfriend was ugly.

Reed’s response? She asked to meet the girl so she could judge for herself.

“She’s absolutely lovely,” she told the boy afterward. “Then we talked about what do you say when kids do that.

“They’re just trying to bug you because they don’t have a girlfriend,” she told him.

“I think probably the (public’s) biggest misconception is that we’re always working with troubled or at-risk kids,” Reed said.

“The majority of people come (to an elementary counselor), get what they need and go on with their life.”

Reed was one of several counselors honored recently for work above and beyond the call of duty at a Spokane Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Center conference.

“She’s my hero,” said Jim Berry, principal at Progress Elementary. Reed has worked as counselor at Progress and Keystone Elementary for four years.

“She just does such great work, great things for kids.”

Reed sometimes find herself working with family situations in which some tough things need to be said to the parents, Berry said.

“She has a way of sort of putting her arm around their shoulder and kicking them in the fanny at the same time. People feel cared about, but they get the message too,” Berry said.

This week at a parenting class, Reed introduced herself by recounting her journey from stay-at-home mom to school counselor.

She volunteered at her kids’ schools, then at age 40, went back to school to get her teaching degree.

“I had two years to go. I could either do it in one year and be absolutely crazy, or I could do it in two.”

Reed, her husband and two children held a family meeting.

“They said, ‘Go in one and get it done.”’ She taught six years, earned a master’s degree at night and got a counseling job in the Spokane schools, where she stayed five years before returning to Central Valley.

Now, Reed handles the needs of students in kindergarten through sixth grade. She also works with teenagers at the county Juvenile Detention Center and their families.

Sounds like a busy life.

“Sometimes (my husband) asks, ‘Autumn, who makes your schedule?”’ she said.

Sometimes Reed’s work includes support groups.

She has run a support group for single dads, a grief support group and a cancer group for parents or children who were going through or had been through chemotherapy.

“The dads were awesome,” she said.

“They were young, and I’m old,” said Reed happily. “So they didn’t have to be cool. I was kind of like their mother.” The group fluctuated from three members to 18 and ran for two years. They finally stopped meeting, only at Reed’s suggestion.

“We were kind of getting a little dependent. I told them, ‘It’s nice out. You need to get on your bikes and go to the park with your kids.”’ Three years later, Reed said, some of the fathers are still friends.

Now, Reed has another target in sight.

“What I really need to do is start a grandparents’ group. We really have a lot of grandparents raising children.”

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