DescriptionThis qualitative work provides insight into the lives of children with diverse abilities and their families as they negotiate social mandates of family life. Through interviews of various family members, from siblings to grandparents, I have found families attempting to interpret perceived prescriptions of normality with a family member stigmatized by medical, cognitive, and/or behavioral deviations. Through this work, I reveal that although the term normal eludes definition, it is constructed and re-constructed as each family member makes sense of specific life experiences. The families depict what they believe to be “normal” family life as they understand it from past experiences and their surrounding culture. However, family members continue to play with the term in defining experiences that fall outside of or transcend what they believe to be typical interactions. As the families in this study define themselves as a unit, “normal” appears to be a baseline by which they interpret their lived experiences of family life and childhood resulting in a creation of a new normal or belief in their “beyond normal” characteristics. The unintended consequences of adhering to mythical constructions of family life, creating a new normal, and beyond normal perceptions are also explored. Analyzing the ways in which families portray their daily interactions will contribute to the fields of childhood studies and special education by providing a nuanced view of childhood, family life, and parental involvement.