As I started to think about the parents desire to give the child the best possible life, I began to wonder how giving the child with autism "the best possible life" might effect the rest of the family. Not only is this going to have a huge impact on the parents and their relationship, finding out your son or daughter has autism is going to largely affect any other children a parent might have. I wanted to find some more information on what a family should expect and how they can better cope and grow together rather than apart.

I found a great article by Kathleen Doheny where she talks about a comparison that Kathleen Patrick once made about finding out your child is disabled. She has a son with pervasive developmental disorder. She said she read an article that really struck home with her called "Welcome to Holland" written by Emily Perl Kingsley, a mother of a disabled child. In the article the woman compares her experience of finding out a child has a disability with planning a trip to Italy and then you find out your going to Holland instead. She says "It's not horrible, just different." She even goes on to say " if you spend your life mourning the lost trip to Italy you will never enjoy the special qualities of Holland. After you're there a bit, she says, you notice the charm --tulips, windmills, Rembrandts." http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/features/autism-and-family-relationships

I found that this idea of the condition not being this horrible thing that happened to you and your family, but instead it just being something different than you expected, really relate-able to most things in life. Almost everyday in life something happens to us that is different from what we expected it to be and we accept it and most of the time embrace it and move on. I would think that this idea would help keep the life changing news of having a child with autism more manageable.