Letter from a Parent

Last week, I got scolded by a provider for not giving “sufficient advance notice” when my child needed to pause treatment. The email read like a middle school detention slip.

Here’s the part that stung: it came from someone at a therapy clinic who works with special needs families. Families already carrying more than most can imagine. Families who sometimes have to call audibles in the middle of chaos just to keep everyone afloat. And on top of that, we’re paying out-of-pocket for services insurance doesn’t cover.

Grace should be the baseline. Flexibility should be assumed. Yet too often, the very people tasked with supporting our kids slip into rigidity and policy-speak, forgetting who they serve.

It was a sharp reminder: systems don’t only break at the top. Sometimes the fracture is in the tone of a single email, the withholding of a little grace.

Because there is a very big difference between:

“We know you’re going through a lot — if something slipped, we understand.”

and treating us like we just TP’d your house.