“I picked up the report, sat in my car, and read it. I went completely numb. I didn’t know whether I should tell my parents, tell my son’s father, or tell anyone at all. I remember staring at those pages and thinking, “How can a group of people sitting in a room decide what my child will become? That day, I promised myself that a diagnosis would explain my son, but it would never define his future.”
The memory remains fresh for Neha Tandon even today.
It was the end of 2008. On her way to work in Noida, the then-26-year-old stopped to collect a report she had been waiting months for. For nearly a year, she had been moving from one doctor to another, searching for answers about her son Maahir, who had suddenly begun losing skills he had once possessed.
The little boy who had smiled, pointed at things, spoken a few words and called her ‘mumma’ appeared to be retreating into a world she could not reach. Nobody around her could explain what was happening, but every instinct told her that something had changed.
When she finally opened the report inside her car, the words on the page confirmed what months of uncertainty had been building towards. Maahir, who was two and a half years old, had been diagnosed with severe autism.
Today, nearly two decades later, Neha is 44, a single mother and the Chief Growth Officer at Zingabad. Her son is preparing to turn 20 this year. He creates chocolates and candles, travels enthusiastically, conducts workshops for younger children, and continues to achieve things many people once believed were beyond his reach.
Alongside her professional career, his mother has become a trusted source of support for hundreds of families navigating autism, sharing their journey through the Instagram platform, @made.it.special.
The page that began as a personal archive of her son’s milestones has grown into a community of 38.5K followers, many of whom are parents searching for reassurance during some of the most difficult moments of their lives.
Everything she does today can be traced back to one frightened young mother sitting alone in a car, trying to make sense of a diagnosis that looked far bigger than anything she had imagined.
The child who started losing words
Maahir was born on 30 June 2006. For the first couple of years, there wasn’t any indication that suggested something was different. He reached his developmental milestones on time, spoke a few words, pointed at objects he wanted, and interacted with the people around him. Like any parent, his mother celebrated these small victories without knowing how important they would later become in her memory.
The little boy who had smiled, pointed at things, spoken a few words and called her ‘mumma’ appeared to be retreating into a world she could not reach.
Then things began to change.
Others did not notice the change immediately, but his mother could not miss it. He smiled less, avoided looking people in the eye, and slowly stopped speaking words that had once come naturally to him. A blankness settled over his expression.
“It felt as though somebody had switched something off overnight,” she recalls. “If you look at photographs from that period, there is a lost look in his eyes. He was not my cheerful little boy anymore. As a mother, you know when something is wrong, even if nobody else can see it.”
Years later, she would learn that her son had regressive autism, a form of autism in which a child loses previously acquired skills. At the time, however, autism itself was barely discussed in most households. She had never heard of regressive autism, and neither had many of the people she consulted.
The months that followed were consumed by uncertainty. One doctor suggested waiting. Another recommended a hearing assessment. Then came EEGs, brain scans, and specialist consultations. Every appointment carried a small measure of hope that somebody would finally explain what was happening. Instead, she found herself returning home with more questions than answers.
At one point, after reading about autism online, she asked a paediatrician whether it could be a possibility.
“He asked me if my son could speak. I said yes. He immediately said it could not be autism. What nobody understood was that he had already started losing those skills,” she tells The Better India.
For nearly nine months, she searched for answers while watching valuable time slip away. Eventually, someone directed her to Action for Autism in Delhi. Specialists observed Maahir, assessed his behaviour, and prepared a report. The diagnosis finally arrived towards the end of 2008.
At last, she knew what she was dealing with. But knowing brought its own pain.
When therapy took over life
Soon after receiving the diagnosis, she put her professional life on hold. At the time, she was building a career in media sales, but suddenly nothing felt more important than helping her son. What followed was a period she remembers as exhausting, overwhelming, and all-consuming.
For families, the hardest part was the uncertainty. Her days became a constant cycle of appointments, traffic, assessments, and waiting rooms.
She became obsessed with intervention.
“I convinced myself that if I worked hard enough, I could somehow fight the diagnosis,” she says. “Everything became about teaching. Say this. Match this. Pick this. Read this. Every moment was about helping him learn something.”
The harder she pushed, however, the more withdrawn her son became. She began noticing that he no longer looked forward to spending time with her. Instead, he became anxious whenever she approached him.
The focus shifted from teaching to just being together, watching films, travelling, playing, and laughing along the way.
The turning point came during a consultation with a therapist in the United States. She provided a suggestion that sounded completely counterintuitive. She was told to step back from teaching him. “I thought she had lost her mind,” Neha says with a laugh.
But the therapist explained something that changed everything. Maahir no longer associated his mother with comfort. Every interaction had become another lesson, another correction, and another expectation.
For the first time, she took a break and asked herself whether helping her son always had to mean teaching him. She stopped trying to fill every moment with therapy and started rebuilding their relationship instead. The focus shifted from teaching to just being together, watching films, travelling, playing, and laughing along the way.
“I realised that if he could not enter my world, I could enter his,” she says. It was a small decision, but it changed the course of their journey in ways she had never thought possible.
Learning to claim space
As her son grew older, Neha found herself confronting another challenge that families of autistic children usually face.
Exclusion.
At just two years old, he was asked to leave a reputed play school because staff felt they could not manage his behaviour. Later, she enrolled him in a prestigious school that promised inclusion and assured her that children with autism would eventually be integrated into mainstream classrooms.
Instead, her son spent most of his time in a separate room designated for children with autism.
For three years, she waited for the inclusion she had been promised. She repeatedly requested that he be allowed to participate in music classes, painting sessions, and other activities where children naturally learn alongside one another.
“Even if academics were difficult, surely he deserved the chance to sing, dance, paint, and play with other children,” she says.
The response she eventually received left her devastated. The school administrators believed that children with a greater chance of entering mainstream classrooms deserved priority access to the school’s limited inclusion resources.
“That day, I decided to withdraw him from the school. I felt that if they could not believe in my child, they had no right to teach him,” she recalls. The experience left her with a conviction she has carried ever since.
“Inclusion is not charity. It is a right. Nobody is doing our children a favour by allowing them to participate,” she says.
Determined not to let society decide where her son belonged, she began taking him everywhere. She embraced every outing, from restaurants and shopping centres to airports, cinemas, and holidays, as a chance for exposure and learning.
The first flight terrified her. She worried about sensory overload, public reactions and meltdowns. Instead, she realised that her son loved travelling.
Over the years, they travelled extensively across India and abroad, visiting destinations including Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Disneyland. During these trips, she experienced what genuine inclusion could look like when systems were designed thoughtfully.
Returning home, however, she found herself confronting a very different reality. “Over time, I realised that autism was not what held my son back. More often, it was society’s inability to understand him,” she says.
Turning experience into support
Around 2014, Neha began speaking more openly about autism and inclusion. It was not because she had set out to become an advocate. It happened because other parents kept finding their way to her.
Many were receiving diagnoses that sounded frightening. Others were struggling with schools, therapies or family expectations. Some only wanted to speak to someone who understood. “There are some things parents will only hear from another parent,” she says.
She embraced every outing, from restaurants and shopping centres to airports, cinemas, and holidays, as a chance for exposure and learning.
Long before autism became a widely discussed topic, she was already sharing resources with families. Therapy manuals, educational materials and specialised tools mostly had to be imported from abroad.
“Many of the therapy manuals and support books we relied on were only available overseas and cost a lot to import back then. So whenever I placed an order from the US, I would ask other parents if they needed anything,” she explains.
The conversations soon extended beyond therapy manuals and guidebooks, creating a space for parents to support one another. One family remains especially memorable. Their son was receiving therapies and medical support, but they rarely took him outside. No restaurants. No holidays. No social gatherings.
Neha encouraged them to start small.
Seeing that picture remains one of her proudest moments.
For many parents navigating autism in the early 2010s, she became a trusted source of information, reassurance and, often, hope. Nitya (name changed), a parent from Delhi whose 22-year-old son is on the autism spectrum, first met Neha in 2009 at a therapy centre their children attended.
At the time, information and resources were scarce. “Whenever resources came her way, Neha never hesitated to share them with us. She was always willing to help, guide and make sure that no family felt like they were navigating the journey alone,” Nitya recalls.
“She has always had very positive energy. She would tell us that the situation may not change, but our attitude towards it can. We need to stay healthy and live long for our children. We cannot do that if we are constantly stressed,” she adds.
For Nitya, Neha’s greatest gift was helping parents move from fear towards acceptance. “Every time I feel low or worried about my son, I call her. There is something about her strength and her smile that is reassuring,” she says.
For Tina (name changed), whose 14-year-old son is on the higher-functioning end of the autism spectrum, Neha became the person parents turned to when they did not know whom to trust.
“She had tried everything with Maahir. Whether it was therapists, interventions or routines, she would tell you honestly what worked and what didn’t. At a time when everyone was giving advice, she became the one person whose guidance you could rely on,” she says.
But it was during one of the most difficult moments of Tina’s parenting journey that her support went beyond advice. Around eight years ago, Tina’s son’s mainstream school asked the family to withdraw him because of his autism diagnosis.
“I was devastated,” she recalls. When Neha heard what had happened, she was furious. She felt that if a child with mild autism was struggling to find acceptance in a mainstream school, the path would be even harder for many others on the spectrum.
Determined to challenge the decision, Neha accompanied her to meet the school’s principal. Armed with her understanding of disability rights and inclusion, she pushed the school to explain its position. When the school could not justify its demand in writing, she helped negotiate a solution that allowed her son to continue his education with the support of a shadow teacher.
“It is because of her that my son stayed in school,” Tina says.
For many parents, Neha’s influence was not restricted to advocacy. Watching her relationship with Maahir challenged their assumptions about what parenting a child with autism could look like.
“She showed us that life did not have to revolve around therapies and worries,” she says. “We saw her having fun with Maahir. Somewhere along the way, many of us had forgotten how to do that with our own children.”
Building a community of hope
In April 2023, Neha attended an autism awareness event at Maahir’s school, the CRIA Foundation. He had spent days preparing chocolates for guests and was proudly distributing them to everyone present.
Over the years, they travelled extensively across India and abroad, visiting destinations including Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Disneyland.
Watching him that day, she instinctively pulled out her phone and recorded the moment. Later, she stitched together a simple video using old clips and uploaded it online.
That post became the beginning of @made.it.special.
Initially, the page was intended to support a much larger dream. She had already purchased the domain name and imagined creating a marketplace where people with intellectual disabilities could sell products they made themselves and earn with dignity.
The response to the account, however, took her in an unexpected direction.
Parents began sending messages. Some had children who had recently been diagnosed. Others had spent years navigating therapies but still felt isolated. Many wanted to know how Maahir had reached this stage.
What started as a personal documentation project eventually grew into a supportive community. Today, @made.it.special has 38.5K followers and acts as a source of encouragement for parents, caregivers, educators, and families across the country.
“They weren’t looking for extraordinary promises. They wanted to know if their children could still lead happy and fulfilling lives,” she says.
The account documents Maahir’s life in all its ordinary and extraordinary moments. There are videos of him travelling, making candles, preparing chocolates, attending workshops, and enjoying time with family. Each post is designed to show possibility rather than limitation.
“The difficult days have not disappeared. There are still meltdowns and nights when I find myself in tears after everyone has gone to sleep. But families are already familiar with those struggles. What they need most is hope,” she says.
One of her favourite examples of inclusion came when her son was invited to teach younger children how to make candles and chocolates at a workshop. For her, that moment represented everything she had spent years fighting for.
“Inclusion happens when people recognise what our children can contribute, not when they feel sorry for them,” she admits.
A future bigger than a diagnosis
Today, the boy attends specialised learning programmes, continues to develop communication skills through an iPad-based system, and spends his days creating, learning and exploring. Every year, he sells handmade products and experiences the pride of earning independently.
Looking back, his mother often thinks about the diagnosis report she threw away all those years ago.
The report predicted one future.
Life unfolded differently.
Today, the boy attends specialised learning programmes, continues to develop communication skills through an iPad-based system, and spends his days exploring.
“Children are not reports,” she says. “They are people. They keep growing, changing and surprising us. Sometimes all they need is someone who believes in them long enough.” For thousands of parents following her journey today, that belief is exactly what Neha Tandon offers. The reassurance that a diagnosis may change the path ahead, but it does not determine how far a child can go.
All pictures courtesy Neha Tandon.
