Why Can’t We Go to Ranch Market?

Parenting an autistic child means living in a world of beautiful routines and baffling mysteries—sometimes all in the same hour.

There’s an invisible weight that many parents of autistic children carry every single day. It’s not just worry—it’s a persistent, underlying anxiety rooted in unpredictability. For us, that weight often shows up in the quiet moments between routines, in the seconds before a potential meltdown, or in the subtle shifts in Jayden’s body language that tell us something’s off—even when we don’t know what it is.

Jayden thrives on routine. Like many children on the spectrum, he finds comfort in predictability. Structure isn’t just helpful—it’s essential. We’ve built his day like a carefully layered cake: wake-up rituals, meal sequences, playtime, therapy, sleep time. Each element has its place. When it flows, the day hums. When it doesn’t… chaos can follow.

And yet, even with all this preparation, there are no guarantees.

Take our move to a new house, for example. We did everything “by the book.” Before moving in, we brought Jayden to the new place to let him explore. He walked through every room, played in the yard, touched the walls, dipped into the pool. He seemed curious, even excited.

Then we moved in.

Suddenly, that sense of adventure disappeared. He retreated into one room and refused to step outside it. No coaxing, no encouragement worked. He stayed in that single space for weeks. It took three months, yes, you heard me, three months—before he began to slowly reintroduce himself to the rest of the house. No tantrums, no big reactions—just quiet resistance and invisible walls we couldn’t see, but he clearly felt.

That’s what makes this so difficult. You can never fully predict what will be accepted and what will be rejected. One day, a new route to the mall is fine. The next, it’s a disaster. Some supermarkets are safe zones. Others—like Hero or Ranch Market—trigger immediate shutdowns. Why? We don’t know. The lighting? The smell? A sound only he hears? It’s a mystery we haven’t cracked, and perhaps never will.

And that mystery? It’s exhausting. Emotionally. Mentally. Sometimes physically.

When meltdowns come, they aren’t just expressions of frustration. They’re full-body, full-volume storms. There are days when plates have flown across the room, vases have shattered, and we’ve found mangoes—yes, mangoes—stuck to the ceiling. The chaos isn’t the problem. It’s the fear that we missed a sign. That we couldn’t protect him from whatever overwhelmed him.

As parents, we often turn into detectives—replaying the day in reverse like a mental security camera. What did we do differently? Did we skip a step in his routine? Was there a shift in mood we ignored? Sometimes we find clues. Other times, we’re left with nothing but guesses.

And that’s the anxiety we live with. Not knowing. Not being sure. Doing everything “right” and still finding ourselves at square one.

We’ve adjusted every aspect of our lives around Jayden’s needs. We shop where he’s comfortable. We plan our schedules with military precision. We live by a script that changes without notice. And when it works, we cling to it. When it doesn’t, we improvise.

But here’s the hard truth: life doesn’t always allow for precision. Traffic jams happen. An accidental rearranging of his toys can throw him off completely. A favorite object isn’t where it should be. And sometimes, those small changes ripple into big reactions. The margin of error is razor-thin.

And yet… this is our life. It’s not something we resent. We don’t write these stories to complain. We write them to understand. To be honest about what it feels like to live in a world that’s always one unknown away from unraveling. To help others see that behind every calm moment is a tremendous amount of unseen effort.

Jayden is not the problem. The world isn’t built for how he experiences it.

So we build what we can: routines, support systems, new ways of communicating. We learn, we adapt, we make peace with the uncertainty. Most days, we do okay. Some days, we just survive. But always, we keep going.

Because loving a child like Jayden doesn’t mean fixing him. It means learning to walk beside him—even when we don’t know where the road is going.

This is Autism Raw. Welcome to our Unscripted Journey.