Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ?
Jess Tuff: Empowering Autism Acceptance Through Advocacy and Empathy – A Mother's Journey in Special Education and Mental Health
19 Mar 2025
Send us a text Jess Tuff shares her emotional journey as a mother advocating for her autistic daughter while navigating the education system and societal stigma. Her story emphasizes the importance of understanding, acceptance, and the changes needed in how we approach autism, advocating for empathy and resources for families still facing challenges. • Jess’s experience in special education and her daughter's diagnosis • The significant role of therapy for both parent and child • Challenges with educators and the impact of stigma • The importance of individual support and understanding • Family dynamics and sibling relationships in autism advocacy • Hope for the future through technology and community awareness https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Full Episode
Welcome to Why Not Me? The World Podcast. Hosted by Tony Mayator. Broadcasting from Music City, USA. Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make you laugh. Some will make you cry. real life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world.
Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me? The World. Joining us today is Jess Tuff, a devoted single mother, passionate educator, and dedicated advocate for mental health awareness, women's empowerment, and special education.
She shares with us her journey with her autistic daughter, the emotions that accompanied her along the way. Her story is truly inspiring, and I'm delighted to have her as our guest. Thanks for coming on.
Yeah, no, thanks for asking.
It's my pleasure. I understand you're involved in the autistic community. What do you do?
I work in a school in special education. I work primarily between the high needs autism room, where some people are like non, there's about five or six kids in there right now. They could be nonverbal, have sensory issues to children that are on the spectrum, but they're in the gen ed classrooms.
So I go individually with them to their classroom to help support them academically, emotionally, socially, to help them integrate. oh that's nice how long have you been doing this this is my second year at the school my career was in early childhood development i used to direct child care centers i did that for 15 years and started a substitute teaching company for that center the problem was
that it was hard to keep it staffed at certain times of the year. Other times, you would have an abundance of people, but there was times of the year where you had no one, and you can't be open without being in ratio with staffed children. So I...
would interview, hire, train, and then I would direct the substitute teachers based on their qualifications between centers based on the needs of the centers at that time. And then my daughters went into school district. So I quit my career and decided I was going to start my own business because I was running other people's businesses for so long. I knew how to do it.
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