About Us

On June 25th, 2015, the word “Autism” was spoken for the first time in reference to my daughter Aliya, just two weeks after her third birthday. Hearing the word pierced through my heart as I held her and my then one-year-old daughter in my arms while I fought back tears of frustration, anger, sadness, and disbelief. How could this happen to me? I was an SLP-A (Speech and Language Pathologist Assistant) with eight years in the practice, and I had expressed my concerns about her delayed developmental milestones, as well as her sudden cease in language development to her Pediatrician. On every single one of those occasions it was mentioned, I was told, “give her time,” “you are self-diagnosing,” “each child is different,” and so I ignored my motherly instincts until she turned two years of age and her younger sister suddenly superseded her development. The Neurologist and his Nurse Practitioner continued their conversation as though it was a norm, as I spaced out thinking of Aliya’s future and what life would look like for my precious family. I felt alone in that office. I would have to be the one to break the news to my husband sadly over the phone, as I kept my composure and reassured him that this would not break us, we would not be defeated, and that based on my years of experience, I knew exactly what to do.  Little did I realize that it was the therapist in me speaking, not the parent. This side of the fence was completely different emotionally and physically.

Following that fateful visit to the Neurologist, we visited numerous medical professionals, including specialty doctors, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, audiologists, psychologists, behavior analysts, and Autism Advocacy Agencies. The list was exhausting and seemed endless. The common culture with those visits was being handed a stack of papers and being told, “Each case is different, Autism has no cure, and we still don’t know what causes it or what the best treatment plan is but call these numbers by contacting these resources so they can help.”  

Determined to provide the best quality of life for our daughter, we immersed ourselves into the Special Needs Community.  She was provided with a bombardment of therapeutic services, treatment plans as we began speaking to other parents, watch countless educational videos, reading books, surfing the internet for the latest proven research, and even deciding that leaving my practice would be the best option for our family. We were refusing to take anyone’s opinion of our beloved Aliya to determine her future. In fact, there’s not a day in her life that we treated her as though she was “different.” The biggest and most important rule in our household was to treat her the same as her younger sister, enforce the same rules, expect the same results, and most of all, be her biggest source of hope, inspiration, and love. 

During those early days of Aliya’s diagnosis, we experienced frustration, grief, anger as all other parents do. Some of the frustrations included: receiving the diagnosis from her Neurologist and receiving conflicting information from the School Psychologist, in turn placing her in the wrong classroom.  I continued to ask myself if this was the only way. I continued to hear the phrase: “You are your child’s best advocate.” At that point, I discovered there was a gap between my family and the Special Needs Community. I felt we needed an experienced individual to help us navigate through this emotional and overwhelming process, someone who would save us the trouble considering they had already been through what we were going through. Someone who we call in to reassure us that we were doing the right thing and that we were not alone in this journey.