“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.

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........

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