Letting Go of Certainty: How Curiosity Helps Us Support Our Kids

Parenting a child with autism often feels like a search for the “right” way to do things—the perfect strategy to prevent meltdowns, the ideal routine to make transitions seamless, the best possible way to support communication and emotional regulation. We crave the reassurance that if we follow the correct steps, things will fall into place. But what if the need for certainty is actually what’s holding us back?

The truth is, no single approach will work forever. Children grow, their needs shift, and what worked yesterday might not work today. Clinging too tightly to a specific method—insisting that a visual schedule has to work or that a previously effective sensory strategy should still be helping—can actually close us off from seeing what our child needs in the moment. We don’t resist change because we’re inflexible; we resist it because we want to feel secure. But the irony is, we never truly had control in the first place—only the illusion of it. When we let go of that illusion, even just a little, we make room for something far more valuable: curiosity.

Curiosity allows us to approach our child’s behavior with fresh eyes. It encourages us to experiment—to try new strategies, observe carefully, and adjust as we go, rather than forcing ourselves into rigid expectations of what should work. This is where we can break free from what author Anne-Laure Le Cunff calls “the tyranny of purpose”—the exhausting belief that everything we do must lead to a final, fixed outcome to be worth doing. What if, instead of seeing behavior strategies as permanent solutions, we viewed them as tiny experiments? What if we stopped waiting for the one approach that would solve everything and instead embraced an ongoing process of learning and adaptation?

Imagine the freedom that comes with not needing every change to be forever. You try a different approach to bedtime—not because it’s the final answer, but because it’s worth seeing what happens. You shift how you respond to a meltdown—not because it guarantees success, but because it helps you understand your child better. And in that process, you remove the pressure to “get it right” and replace it with a way of parenting that is more present, more responsive, and ultimately, more fulfilling.

At the end of the day, you might as well embrace curiosity—because clinging to certainty won’t stop life from changing. But staying open to discovery? That’s where real connection and growth happen.

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Anne-Laure Le Cunff (2025). Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World