TikTok Dads Terrell and Jarius Joseph Want to Remind You Families Come in All Shapes and Sizes

Space Mountain, character breakfasts and Dole whips are great and all. But for TikTokers Terrell Joseph and Jarius Joseph, the highlight of a recent trip to Disney with son Ashton, 6, and daughters Aria, also 6, and Aspen, 14 months, wasn't an attraction you'd find in any guidebook. 

"One of the Disney princesses was talking to our daughter," Terrell described to E! News in an exclusive sit-down with husband Jarius. "They are taking pictures and she says, 'Oh my goodness, you have such handsome knights behind you.'" Which is when Aria broke in, he continued, and "she said, 'No, no, wait. Those are my dads: Dad and Daddy.'" 

The moment was "so innocent," noted Terrell, a.k.a. "Daddy" to his trio of little ones, "but it was just so cute that she wanted to correct her and stand in, 'Those are my dads,' being proud of it, not ashamed." 

Who needs the happiest place on earth when you've got love and acceptance? 

Because at Aria and Ashton's Atlanta-area school, they do stand out—in all the best ways. 

"We're super active in the kids' school," explained Jarius, "and I will say that our community has been so embracing of us and our family makeup. And their classmates think it's the coolest thing ever that they have two dads." 

Echoed Terrell, "They yell in the cafeteria, 'That's Ashton's dad and daddy!' I think that's really cool. It's all about representation, visibility, just being able to see something positive. It's not a taboo thing. It's just normal. Like, 'Oh, that's their dad and daddy.' I don't think that the kids are super confused by it." 

It's basically everything the pair could dare to hope for when they began planning their future family as college students in Baton Rouge. 

"I was taking calls with surrogacy agencies in Mexico," recalled Terrell of his urge to settle down ASAP. Following Jarius' request that they be settled in a house first, they graduated in May 2015, moved out of their apartment in June and learned they had a baby on the way that October. 

"Everyone thought we were crazy," Terrell admitted. "They were just like, 'You're super young, you're in a same-sex relationship, how are you going to make this work?' But we were determined." 

Though there were a few small details to work through—as in they still had to come out to their families and reveal their plans to marry—the pair happily shared all with their loved ones halfway through the pregnancy. Then, recounted Terrell, "Our surrogate had a miscarriage at 20 weeks." 

At that point, added Jarius, "We had come out maybe a month-and-a-half, two months prior. We were starting to get the support, but it was still very, very new. So we kind of closed off from the world."

They hadn't really considered that they would experience a loss so late in the game, said Terrell, "We were like, 'Oh, we're in the safe zone.'"

Nor did they have a roadmap for how to navigate that tragedy as two men. "It looks very different, our experience in the hospital where they are focused on the mother or the surrogate during a loss like that," explained Terrell. "It was the very low point in our relationship. But it also brought us closer together."

Having worked through their different grief journeys—with Jarius shifting into fix-it mode, eager to try again, "Terrell had to let me know, 'It feels like you're trying to replace our daughter'"—they successfully built their current family of five.

Now, the married fathers want to share the wisdom they collected along the way, writing their book Love Out Loud (on sale June 4), said Jarius, "in hopes that we can make the road easier for people coming behind us." 

Their aim is to guide those who aren't really sure where to start in building their own families, he continued: "Just having someone that you can relate to is something we wish that we would have had when we were going through this process."

Among the lessons the fathers of three can pass on: How to silence online trolls. 

While Terrell admittedly struggles with keeping his emotions in check when someone suggests, for instance, that Aspen's brighter complexion is the result of them "trying to cherry pick these kids to look a certain type of way," he does his best to step away from the keyboard.

Thoughts gathered, he and Jarius try to respond with facts, not fire. 

"People speak a lot from an opinion-based point of view and just a very limited experience of their own reality, versus actually understanding the facts of how a family comes to be like ours," explained Jarius. "And I found more success in the education part of it."

So when it comes to Aspen, they'll explain how their only priority was finding a traditional surrogate willing to be the biological mother of a child for two fathers. "When we break down the statistics and we get to show you it's not that we're trying to create a family that looks a certain way, but this is how the world works," continued Jarius, "people then start to say, 'Huh, okay, well, I guess that does make a little sense. So maybe I need to reevaluate how I approach these situations next time.'"

They've grown used to clearing up misconceptions, including the idea "that we're constantly hammering that, 'Same sex relationships are okay, this is how you have to be, this is how you're raised,'" said Terrell. When, really, "We're raising them to be whoever they want to be, love whoever they want."

Rather, their conversation with their kids about same-sex families is just that, a straightforward, simple chat. 

"We just explained to them, there are going to be some kids at your school that are going to have their grandparents heavily involved and they're not going to have Mommy and Daddy," said Jarius. "There are going to be some kids that look this way, there are going to be some kids that have family structures that way. And it's all beautiful."

The idea isn't to delve into topics elementary schoolers may not be ready for.

Put bluntly, this is not a let's-talk-about-sex-moment, said Jarius, "If you just normalize that families live different, that can be the extent of your conversation. That's already a step in the right direction. But you don't have to talk about the intricacies of every relationship."

As for the nitty-gritty of their family structure, "I will be honest with you, it's hard," acknowledged Jarius, "but it's a good hard." 

For them, a key takeaway they mastered early on with Ashton and Aria, both born prematurely just five weeks apart, was that "we needed to be the parent that they needed us to be," said Terrell, "and not the parents that we thought we were meant to be." So now with all three kids, "We're constantly shifting parenting styles, because they require that of us."

The struggle is real, but rewarding enough that the couple are now strongly considering adding another baby into the mix.

Even on the toughest days, said Terrell, "what ultimately brings us back is just knowing that one day when they are adults and they are well-adjusted and well-rounded human beings, it's going to be so beautiful to see the work that we put in to create the next generation of future thought leaders and people who are going to make change come about in the world and who are going to just have so much love about them."