This Family’s Journey Counters RFK’s Autism Claims with Truth and Joy

For the past twelve years, I have been raising a son on the autism spectrum. That journey has shaped how I see the world, how I love, how I parent, how I advocate, and how I show up for other families like mine. Through the tears, triumphs, missed milestones, breakthroughs, and long nights filled with questions, I’ve come to know autism not as a single story but as a deeply personal, ever-evolving spectrum of experiences.

That’s why when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently made a sweeping statement about autism, suggesting that many autistic people won’t marry, hold a job, or pay taxes, it struck a nerve. Not because there isn’t hardship on this path. There is. I’ve lived it. But because in attempting to speak for the spectrum, he erased the very thing that defines it: its complexity. Autism does not present the same way in every person. And that matters.

There are families who are struggling. And there are families who are thriving. Often, there are families doing both at the exact same time. RFK’s comment that autism “tears families apart” is not wholly untrue, but it is wholly incomplete. It’s not the diagnosis that breaks us, it’s often the lack of resources, the misunderstanding, the isolation, and the systems that fail to meet our children with the support they deserve.

What’s more dangerous than the statement itself is the lens through which it was said. It was infantilizing. Kennedy referred to autistic individuals almost exclusively as children. He even claimed he had “never seen an adult with autism,” a comment that reflects not reality but his own limited awareness. Children with autism grow up. They become adults with autism. And we don’t bring those adults into the conversation nearly enough.

That’s exactly why I chose to begin this series with an adult. We can’t keep speaking about autism only through the lens of early intervention or parental survival. If we truly want to center neurodivergent voices, we have to ask: what do adults with autism want us to know? What do they experience? How do they see the world?

To answer that, I sat down with 20-year-old Isaac Lewis and his mother, Lashondra Lewis, a Black family whose story reminds us just how incomplete the public narrative about autism really is.

Isaac has worked at Walmart for two years. When I asked him about it, he lit up. He takes pride in keeping the parking lot spotless, in pushing carts quickly and neatly, in just “doing it,” as he says. He doesn’t overexplain, he just shows up. He lives his life with a quiet confidence, one that doesn’t require validation. He loves his family deeply, especially his baby niece Remini, whom he reads to and helps care for. When I asked him what he wanted people to know about his life, he looked into the camera and said simply, “I like to be me.”

That’s it. That’s the whole truth, wrapped in five words.

Lashondra Lewis knows what it means to advocate without fanfare. Her work as an activist has always been grounded in her community, but her most personal act of advocacy has been in her own home, raising Isaac with care, clarity, and compassion.

Her journey began with small signs. “When we were potty training around 18 months, I noticed Isaac wasn’t giving me the usual cues,” she said. From there, it was a path marked by discovery and adaptation, not just for her, but for her whole family. Isaac was enrolled in the Child Find program by age three, and over time, Lashondra made a conscious choice not to define him by a diagnosis.

“I’ve never sat him down and said, ‘You are on the spectrum,’” she told me. “We just focused on meeting him where he is, on finding his interests, technology, computers, anything electronic, and building from there.”

Isaac is the middle child, and his siblings played a huge role in normalizing everyday interaction, reinforcing that difference didn’t mean distance. But Lashondra also recognized early that navigating the world as a Black boy who processes things differently came with added layers of risk. She spoke candidly about her fears, especially around encounters with people who don’t understand him.

“We talk a lot about social cues,” she said, sharing a story about Isaac’s first job and his confusion over a shared breakroom fridge. “He thought it was like the one at home. He ended up heating up someone else’s lunch. It was innocent, but it showed me how important it was to prepare him for situations like that.”

It’s this kind of preparation, daily, deliberate, loving, that shapes how Lashondra sees her role. Not as a protector from the world, but as a translator of it.

“If I had one message for other mothers,” she said, “it would be this: stay the course. Focus on the person, not the diagnosis. Meet your child where they are. That’s where everything starts.”

And that’s why stories like Isaac’s matter.

Because autism isn’t a headline. And until we stop chasing one-size-fits-all definitions and start listening to the many ways this neurotype shows up, we’ll continue to misunderstand it.

Autism is not a disease. It is a neurotype. It is not something to be “cured.” What challenges us are not the people who think differently, but the systems and assumptions that fail to support the way those differences show up. The difficulty is in the symptoms, not the identity.

And because it can’t be measured in bloodwork or spotted on a scan, we have to learn to see it through stories. Through lived experience. Through the voices of those who live it every day.

So yes, RFK’s comments may have reignited public debate, but we cannot let the conversation end there. April may be Autism Acceptance Month, but acceptance isn’t seasonal. Understanding isn’t temporary. And visibility isn’t optional.

If we want to do better, we have to keep telling these stories, and not just the hard ones. The working-and-thriving ones. The joyful ones. The adult-centered ones.

Because as Isaac reminded us so simply and beautifully:

“I like to be me.”

And that is more than enough reason to listen.