Black Mothers Are Asked to Prove Their Autistic Children Deserve Care—Harmony’s Story Shows The Cost
Tanasha Jackson has faced one hurdle after another in an effort to gain resources and help for her daughter.
The moment Harmony’s mother, Tanasha Jackson, began recording the occupational therapy session, she says the atmosphere changed.
What had already felt tense suddenly became uncomfortable in a different way. According to her account, the therapist had been speaking harshly to Harmony and would not allow her to answer questions on her daughter’s behalf, despite Harmony being a young minor with autism. Sitting in the room, listening to the exchange escalate, she says she became overwhelmed and started crying.
Then came the moment she still cannot shake.
“She smiled,” Harmony’s mother said, describing the therapist’s reaction as emotions escalated during the session.
The interaction took place at Therapy World, where Harmony had been receiving occupational therapy services. According to her mother, the conversation eventually turned toward attendance concerns. She says she explained that Harmony had never struggled with attendance before, but the instability caused by being out of school had disrupted her routine and emotional regulation.
Feeling cornered, she began documenting the interaction on her phone.
According to her account, the therapist’s demeanor changed immediately after she disclosed she had recorded the conversation. Not long afterward, Harmony was removed from services.
For Tanasha, the incident became part of a larger pattern she says she has faced for years while trying to secure support for her daughter. What began as concern over developmental differences eventually became a long, exhausting cycle of evaluations, school issues, provider conflicts, and constant advocacy, often while navigating financial strain and the loss of employment.
Harmony was diagnosed with autism when she was seven, and now she’s nine years old. By 2020, she says she was actively seeking answers, but repeatedly encountered resistance from both medical providers and educational systems.
“The school did not understand her needs,” she wrote in an email detailing her experiences. “I was often made to feel as though I was lacking as a parent rather than being supported in understanding my child’s needs.”
She says one pediatrician refused to provide a referral for further developmental evaluation. At another point, she was allegedly told Harmony would need to be placed on medication before she could even be seen by developmental specialists.
The delays stretched across years.
Eventually, another parent of a child with autism connected her with a neuropsychologist who could properly evaluate Harmony. Even then, she says the process felt emotionally punishing after years of trying to convince people that her daughter needed help.
“No one prepares you for the level of questioning that comes after years of trying to get help and being turned away,” she wrote. “It felt like having to prove everything all over again after already fighting to be heard.”
For many families raising autistic children, particularly Black families, delayed diagnosis and barriers to care are not uncommon. Studies have repeatedly shown that Black children are often diagnosed later than their white peers, despite showing early developmental signs. Advocates and researchers have also pointed to the ways Black parents are frequently treated with suspicion or dismissal when raising concerns about their children’s behavioral or developmental needs.
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When Advocacy Changes The Room
As Harmony grew older, her mother says the challenges surrounding her care became increasingly difficult to separate from the reactions she received while advocating for her.
In 2025, Harmony began receiving in-home Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy after her mother took a leave of absence from work to provide more consistent support at home. The services lasted approximately one month, according to her account, before the supervising provider allegedly left the position.
The experience left her unsettled.
During the brief period services were in place, she says she overheard a conversation in which a therapist was instructed to photograph everything observed inside her home. She also questioned whether Harmony was being treated with appropriate care and sensitivity during sessions.
“The experience further reinforced the pattern I had been facing,” she wrote, “difficulty accessing consistent, appropriate care, even after finally securing services.”
Concerns about how Harmony was treated also extended into childcare settings.
According to Tanasha, Harmony attended three separate daycare programs over time. The most serious incident allegedly occurred at an in-home daycare where Harmony had initially appeared comfortable and settled.
One day, Harmony came home and told her mother that the provider instructed her not to tell people she was autistic.
For her mother, the comment carried immediate weight. Autism shaped the way Harmony communicated, processed routines, and experienced the world around her. Telling a child to conceal that part of herself felt deeply inappropriate, she said, particularly in an environment responsible for her care.
After she addressed the issue with the provider, tensions escalated.
Shortly afterward, she says she was told to pick up Harmony and was informed that her daughter would not be allowed to participate in an upcoming field trip with the other children. According to her account, before she arrived, the daycare provider contacted law enforcement.
Harmony was eight years old at the time.
Later, when her mother obtained the police report related to the incident, she says Harmony’s age was listed incorrectly as 10, despite the provider allegedly knowing her actual age.
She subsequently filed a complaint with the Department of Social Services. According to her account, she initially received a request to cooperate with the investigation, but says she never received meaningful follow-up afterward.
The incidents left her increasingly distrustful of the systems she believed were supposed to support families like hers.
That distrust intensified during interactions with school personnel and therapy providers. At Therapy World, she says she noticed a therapist speaking privately with someone connected to Harmony’s school district on several occasions. Whenever she entered the room, according to her statement, the conversations would abruptly stop.
Individually, each interaction may have appeared minor from the outside. Together, they created an atmosphere she describes as isolating and adversarial, one where advocacy often seemed to trigger scrutiny rather than support.
“The moment you start asking questions,” she said, “everything changes.”
For many parents raising disabled children, advocacy quickly becomes part of daily life. Meetings, evaluations, behavior reports, referrals, documentation, appeals, and constant communication with schools and providers become routine. For Black mothers, those interactions can also carry an additional layer as they navigate institutions that frequently interpret persistence as confrontation.
Tanasha says she learned that balance early. Staying calm mattered. Being organized mattered. Explaining herself carefully mattered. Yet, even then, she says she often left interactions feeling as though she was being evaluated alongside her daughter.
A Full-Time Fight Without Full-Time Support
School instability also affected Harmony’s routine and behavior, something her mother says providers often failed to fully understand. For many autistic children, structure is critical. Disruptions can significantly affect emotional regulation, communication, and classroom behavior.
As services stalled and conflicts with providers continued, the pressure inside the home intensified. What emerges from Tanasha’s account is not a single dispute with one school, therapist, or daycare provider. It is the exhaustion of constantly having to explain, document, defend, and advocate while simultaneously trying to parent a child with complex needs. She reached out to her local NAACP chapter for help, but says she was only met with resistance. Further, she’s contacted well-known advocates and attorneys seeking guidance, but there, she was met with silence.
National conversations around autism advocacy have increasingly focused on the experiences of Black families, many of whom report delayed diagnoses, disciplinary disparities in schools, limited access to specialized care, and dismissal from medical professionals when raising developmental concerns.
For Tanasha, those conversations feel painfully familiar. She says the hardest part was realizing how quickly concern could be reframed as conflict once she began questioning decisions involving her daughter’s care.
Even now, she says she continues advocating because there is little alternative. Appointments still need to be scheduled. Records still need to be kept. School meetings still happen. Complaints still require follow-up.
The work does not pause simply because a parent is exhausted. And for Harmony, a child whose life has already been shaped by fluctuations across schools, therapy settings, and caregiving environments, her mother says consistency remains the one thing she continues to fight to secure.
Even now, Tanasha says much of her life revolves around managing systems that never seem fully built for children like her daughter. Therapy appointments, school meetings, evaluations, complaints, documentation, follow-up calls. The work is constant, even when the support is not.
What she remembers most are the moments that changed the way she viewed the institutions around her. Sitting in therapy offices, trying not to cry. Watching services disappear after raising concerns. Picking her daughter up after another difficult day and wondering whether advocacy had quietly turned her into a problem in the eyes of the people meant to help.
The consequences for Harmony have been deeply personal. Interrupted routines. School struggles. Instability across care environments during years when consistency mattered most.
Still, her mother says she continues pushing forward because stopping has never felt like an option. Even now, she continues to fight her previous employer, who listed her leave of absence to care for Harmony as Tanasha voluntarily quitting her position, “rather than recognizing that I was on an approved or requested leave. This led to my unemployment benefits being denied.”
“I am currently appealing that decision, as I believe the circumstances were misrepresented and that I was not afforded fair due process throughout the handling of my case.”
As unsupported as she’s felt through this years-long, arduous process, Tanasha can’t stop pressing forward. Black mothers of autistic children are fighting the good fight, even when doors have closed. Tanasha’s story mirrors that of thousands of others, and hopefully, Harmony will receive the support and care she needs, as will other children who are ignored or dismissed by the system that is supposed to care for them.
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