Redefining “Normal”: What Raising Children With Autism Taught Our Family About Faith, Marriage, and Belonging

For many families, going out to dinner is simple.

You decide where to eat, get everyone in the car, and go.

For our family, it was never quite that simple.

Going to a restaurant meant thinking ahead. Where might we be seated? How crowded will it be? Which parent will handle which child? What happens if one of our children becomes overwhelmed? If a behavior becomes too disruptive, which one of us will leave?

Eventually, we stopped going to restaurants together as a family.

Not because we did not want those experiences. And certainly not because our children did not deserve to be there. We stopped because we could not control the crowds, the seating, or the environment, and trying to manage everything had become incredibly stressful for our children and for us.

Over the years, autism has changed many things about how our family lives.

It has changed how we attend birthday parties. How we vacation. How we practice our faith. How we spend time together as husband and wife. It has even changed how we think about something most families probably do not spend much time thinking about:

What does a “normal” family life actually mean?

Ordinary Things Can Require Extraordinary Planning

When you are raising children with autism, particularly children with significant support needs, ordinary activities can require an extraordinary amount of preparation.

For family gatherings and birthday parties, we learned to take two vehicles.

That was not an accident. It was part of the plan.

If one of our children became overwhelmed and needed to leave, one parent could take them home while the other stayed with our other children. It gave us a way to meet the needs of one child without automatically ending the experience for everyone else.

Vacations required similar adjustments.

One thing we refused to give up was traveling together as a family. But we changed how we traveled.

Instead of relying primarily on hotels, we began choosing vacation homes whenever possible. Having our own space gives us greater control over our surroundings, routines, meals, downtime, and daily activities.

When Other People Do Not Understand

One of the hardest parts of raising a child with autism in public is not always the behavior.

Sometimes it is everyone else's reaction to it.

The staring used to be especially difficult for us. A look from a stranger can feel incredibly judgmental when you are already trying to help your child through a difficult moment.

There is one experience at a community pool that has stayed with us.

Our son was playing with a water toy and accidentally sprayed a man nearby. We apologized and explained that our son had autism.

That moment taught us something important.

We understand that having autism does not mean every behavior should simply be ignored. As parents, we still have a responsibility to teach our children and help them navigate the world.

But understanding can make an enormous difference.

What might look like defiance, poor parenting, or a child who “should know better” to a stranger can be much more complicated for a family living with autism.

We are not asking the world to excuse everything our children do. We are asking for a little patience while they learn to navigate a world that can be incredibly difficult for them to understand.

The Things People Do Not See

People see the moment in the grocery store.

They do not see everything that happened before it.

They do not see the sleepless nights.

When our daughter was younger, there were long nights of screaming and crying that we could not always stop or understand. As she grew older, those nights became much less frequent, but other responsibilities remained.

People do not see the constant awareness that comes with keeping a child safe.

These questions become part of everyday life.

Eventually, you become so accustomed to thinking about them that you may not even realize how much mental energy they require.

You are simply being Mom and Dad.

Autism Did Not Stop at Our Marriage's Door

There is another part of this journey that is not discussed enough.

Marriage.

A marriage grows when you give it attention. But when you are raising children who require significant care and supervision, your attention naturally keeps returning to your children.

Ours did too.

There were periods when we had very little left for each other.

We went through trials in our marriage before realizing that if we wanted our relationship to grow stronger, we had to become intentional about protecting it.

We had to ask family members for help so we could go on dates.

We relied heavily on consistent bedtimes because sometimes the only opportunity we had for a “date” was after the children were asleep.

It did not always mean getting dressed up and going somewhere. Sometimes it simply meant creating space for each other inside the life we already had.

Faith When Going to Church Is Not Simple

Our faith has always been important to us.

But even attending church together became difficult.

For years, we would take turns. One parent would stay home with the children while the other attended church, and then we would switch.

Eventually, there was a painful feeling attached to that arrangement. We wanted to worship together as a family.

So instead of allowing what we could not do to separate us from our faith, we adapted again.

We began attending virtually.

Our living room became a place where all of our children could be with us.

Our faith did not disappear because our family could not participate in the traditional way. If anything, this journey has taught us how much we need it.

There have been many moments when the only thing we could do was ask God for guidance, patience, and enough strength for whatever came next.

The Guilt Parents Do Not Always Talk About

We have experienced exhaustion.

We have felt isolated.

We have been embarrassed when we could not get control of a behavior in public or at a family gathering.

We have felt left out.

But there is another emotion that can be harder to talk about:

Guilt.

For us, it was not jealousy when we watched another family do something easily that was difficult for ours.

It was sometimes sadness.

We have four children. Two have autism and two are typically developing. There have been times when the needs of their siblings meant our other children could not experience something in quite the same way another family might.

That is difficult for a parent to carry.

You love all of your children equally, but equal love does not always mean equal amounts of your time.

Some children simply need more from you.

We have had to learn to recognize that reality while continuing to find ways to create experiences and memories for every one of our children.

Sometimes that meant two cars. Sometimes it meant one parent staying while another left. Sometimes it meant changing the plan completely.

That became our normal.

When Your Little Child Becomes an Adult

Something else changes as children with autism grow older.

The world's reaction to them changes too.

When our daughter was little, people seemed more accepting of her sounds, crying, stimming, or screaming.

She was a child.

Now she is a young woman.

The same kinds of behaviors can cause very different reactions.

A stranger may become nervous when she stands too close in a checkout line. Someone may look concerned when they see two adults holding her hand or helping prevent a behavior.

They do not know her. And unless we explain it, they do not know she has autism.

A behavior that people may tolerate or understand in a five-year-old can cause fear when they see it in an adult body.

That is one of the realities families eventually have to prepare for.

To the Parent Who Has Stopped Going Places

If you are a mother or father who has stopped going places because you are afraid of what your child might do—or what someone else might think—we understand.

What you are feeling is real.

We are human beings who react to our environment, and raising a child with autism can leave you feeling on edge before you have even walked through the door.

We have been there.

Our advice is not to pretend the fear does not exist.

Prepare. Have a Plan A. Have a Plan B. Give yourself permission to leave when leaving is what your child needs.

But do not allow one unkind person to convince you that there is no kindness left in the world.

There are people who genuinely want to help. Sometimes they simply do not understand what they are seeing or do not know what you need.

We have had to learn patience with them too.

And when we do not know what to do next, we return to our faith.

We ask God to guide us. We ask Him to help us persevere when we are afraid, exhausted, frustrated, or simply unsure whether we can handle one more difficult day.

We remind ourselves that we do not have to do this entirely on our own.

So What Is “Normal”?

After all these years, autism has changed our definition of normal.

And perhaps the biggest thing we have learned is this:

Normal is simply a known way of life.

Our typically developing children have things about them that are “normal” and things that are not.

So do our children with autism.

So do we.

There is something beautiful about accepting one another regardless.

Our family may worship from the living room. We may arrive at a birthday party in two cars. A vacation rental may work better for us than a hotel. A simple outing may require a strategy that looks more like a football playbook than a family trip to the store.

And sometimes one of us may have to leave early.

That is our family. That is our normal.

We do not ask people to pity our children.

We do not want people to feel sorry for us.

We ask for patience.

Our children are trying to navigate a world that can be difficult for them to understand. And sometimes the people around us are trying to understand too.

Raising children with autism has made us more accepting when we encounter something that does not look “normal” to us.

Instead of immediately judging what we do not understand, we have learned there is a much better question we can ask: