How Can I utilize my previous background and education best?

[Thewayback]

I have a M.S. in Applied Behavior Analysis. I have a decade of experience working with children and families as well as adults with developmental disabilities. Three of those years providing direct services (behavior intervention) to children with developmental disabilities and in the most recent years providing case management and creating individualized service plans supporting individuals in accessing appropriate community supports. During this time I was able to collaborate with RNs and also marry an RN. In my work as I moved up I often missed providing direct services, but had to trade in that aspect for higher pay (higher pay that was still half of what my RN spouse in CA makes). Armed with some knowledge of what nursing really entailed, thanks to coworkers and my husband I decided to start taking the prerequisites to apply for nursing school. I've been successful  so far, and also completed a CNA course and worked as a patient safety tech very part-time and will actually be tutoring those nursing science prerequisites while I wait to apply this Winter to nursing school. I'm really excited to be a nurse in a few years and know that I'll be a new grad starting from scratch like everyone else in that aspect, but can my previous education and work experience help me at all if I want to get into pediatric nursing new grad? I feel like everything I read it sounds like all that matters is if you volunteer at a children's hospital, but I have years of experience working with children with disabilities (meetings at their school, with their community health team members) and extensive coursework that covered developmental milestones and how to conduct developmental and behavioral assessments as well as the study of child psychopathology. Any advice on how to get into a PEDS new grad in CA would be appreciated. Also, if the consensus is that my previous education and work experience isn't worth sh*t for my future in nursing let me know!