[Music] we are very routined in our house I'm home hello hi our children know exactly what's coming at every point in the day hi I'm Maria Davis Pierre I am a licensed mental health counselor here in the State of Florida I have three kids Malia our oldest who is 11 now and then we have TNS Davis who is eight and Brooklyn who is also eight and Davis and Malia are both autistic and Brooklyn has 8hd autism in Black came pretty early on um because of just navigating what we navigated with Malia initially I just started it to bridge that gap for black parents um to give them the resources to let them know that there's no shame to stand on a platform at the time and say yes I am parenting a black autistic child and it's okay black in and I'm here with a special guest Miss Malia Pierre she is the reason that autism in Black exists she is the reason with Malia she had more of um your typical DSM um characteristics of autism she was not looking um people straight in the eye she had a very slow response time to the point that I actually thought she was deaf [Music] I've been cooking um some fruit salad chicken alfredo fried chicken and french fries I went to my husband who is a physician and um he was taking back and he was like diagnose your clients not my kid um so we took some time to process that I was complete denial mode it was just more of a fear response because I was like hold what do you mean autistic like I didn't have any clue what that meant it almost was like this gray cloud kind of coming over my eyes because now a future that I Envision for my daughter I really couldn't Envision anymore because I didn't know what the diagnosis and what that diagnosis would carry for her meant for us in the future one of the biggest challenges for black parents is access to resources and access to information um because that that Gap exists nobody's coming into our communities to tell us about autism and and tell us what it is she received her diagnosis officially at 18 months but never in the process was I feeling um sad or upset or anything like that and I guess it also has to do with my clinical experience of knowing what autism is um I was more sad upset and frustrated with the process we started with our pediatrician who didn't want to give us the referral to early steps and I actually did a boycott in his office for a week and after a week he did get um tired of me being in his office so he gave us the paperwork and that's how she got her diagnosis now we knew what interventions if we needed occupational therapy we needed speech therapy we needed Physical Therapy we knew the route we needed to go being able to recognize that early uh probably changed the trajectory of my daughter's life my daughter started having this personality of her own uh it was just amazing to see it was amazing to see like oh look at my little girl uh becoming uh older and becoming wiser and having her thoughts and feelings for herself and recognizing that she's in her world and now I'm able to be a part of her world good job orange belt coming up my son who was a twin um his process went a little differently we also saw a lot of characteristics and signs but I felt he was having more sensory sensitivities and we were going that route because I'm the favorite Child yeah right what's interesting with Davis is just as cuz he's my own son so as as just as the son I I recognize that hey you know there are some some certain Unwritten rules that are going to affect you more than it may affect others uh of different skin color and you know his his typical normal maybe emotional reaction which is normal for him and more importantly normal for for our world as a black autistic son may not be normal for someone he comes into contact with and I think that's that's probably the scariest aspect of it just being black and autistic and having that intersectional peace knowing that people often times in society see us by our skin color before we can even get to the fact that there's a disability and wanting to protect them and shield them from that but also wanting them to experience the world that's a fine line mind that I often struggle with never what give up never back down never one so I created autism in black um to show them that there are others out there and as we've grown we've added so much into what we do we have our conference we have our podcast we're doing workshops we're training other or organizations on how to be less harmful to the black disability community so I make sure that we are in the community doing the work and making sure that you know black parents and black autistic individuals know that you're not alone hi and welcome to another episode of the autism in Black podcast your I received my autism diagnosis 3 years ago at 37 there are es and flows to um me discovering that I'm autistic one I think just knowing that I relate it so much to my kids because I am them and that's why a lot of the things that they were experiencing were not something that was just so going to take me back cuz I was doing it as well I need to give myself more grace I need to not hold myself to these standards that I'm just not going to be able to make sometimes because I'm autistic having a supportive husband who was just like I called him from the car and I was like the psychiatrist is saying and that I'm autistic he was like yeah that that makes sense um what time are you going to be home for me it was that confirmation like oh that's what it was that's the missing piece that I was that I didn't have to explain how you act the way you act seeing my wife over these years and experiencing our our daughter and our son and even our uh uh youngest daughter it it's been so interesting just to kind of see all of these moving Parts kind of just move around the world and recognizing that like I made may have to have interchangeable parts of myself uh to be able to kind of fit the best model that you know I can be for as a husband to fit the best model I can be as a father and it's such a enriching experience for us seeing them develop into their own little people and seeing them accomplish things that even sometimes that I have in my mind like oh my God I can't believe you're doing that just seeing that has been amazing and rewarding part of parenting you [Music]