11. Navigating Big Change

Hi, I'm Kate Morris.

And I'm Dave Whittingham.

Many neurodivergent children find change challenging, so how do we help our children through those moments of big change? Moving house, moving school, or maybe the arrival of a new sibling.

G', day, everyone. Welcome to 2026 and welcome to season two of Neurodivergence, family and Faith. It's so exciting to be kicking off our second season.And welcome along. Kate. Great to have you here back as well.

It's great to be back.It's been really lovely, actually, to be planning for this second season, I think, particularly after all the lovely feedback that people have sent us from the first season. So thank you so much for that.And we're really looking forward to launching into this season, thinking through some of the tricky aspects of parenting, marriage. We're going to be looking into all different topics. Some of them will be related to questions that you have sent us over season one.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this season. For today's episode, we're thinking about change and transition and how all that plays out in life in. In Australia.Here we're about to start a new school year. That can be a massive change for people. During the summer break as well, lots of people are moving house and that is massive.I've heard that moving house is the third most stressful event in life after dying and divorce. Then you've got moving house, so that's huge.But there are all sorts of big changes that can happen in life and they bring about all sorts of stresses and worries, don't they, Kate?

Yeah, they really do. And these can be really impactful, particularly for neurodivergent children.Change can make a big difference to them and how they're coping, their stress levels, anxiety levels and outlook on life as well.

Yeah, we've moved our family so many times. I think we're all just sort of a bit traumatised by that and we've got to work our way through that. And when you do something like moving, there are.The stresses come from every angle. There can be stresses as simple as, okay, I get up in the morning. I'm going to go to the kitchen to get my breakfast.Do I turn left or right out of my bedroom? Okay, I've got to get the bowl out for the cereal. Where's the drawer again that we decided to put the bowls in?So there are hundreds of little things that you don't even think about, but then it stretches out to the really, really big things of. I've Got new neighbors. Do I need to relate to them? How do I relate to them? I might be at a new school or in a brand new classroom.How are those relationships going to play out on day one, but also on day 300? What does all this mean?And all those changes, most of which we don't even consider until we're in them, they all bring their own level of stress and they pile on top of each other.

Yeah, absolutely. And that can be exhausting. And it also is your brain ticking through each of those new decisions, those new things to process.And so constantly your energy is being run down. And it just. If everyone in the whole family is going through this particular transition, then the whole family is probably experiencing some of that.I know for my family, we moved to France when my eldest was two years old, and we lived there for nine years. And while we were there, we had two new little ones join our family. And so we adjusted to that. We moved a few times while we were in France as well.And then a few years ago, moving back to Australia and just huge things to process, like the size of the birds and the spiders in Australia. I mean, the way people laugh in Australia, the way you relate to people.And then things like at school, they sit on the floor here, you'd never do that where we lived in France. The school week is different. Here, I mean, the changes were just absolutely huge. And I think things like exercise went out the window.Things like Bible reading routines went out the window. Healthy eating for a time as well went out the window.And I think you just kind of end up feeling like so much is slipping through your grasp, like things that are really important.But I do look back at these times of big change, and I also think it's brought our family closer together, closer to each other, more reliant on each other, and I guess dependable for each other as well. But also it's moments like that that actually remind us really strongly to turn to God. We should always be dependent on God.But it's just such an important moment, isn't it, to turn to God and recognize just how much we need Him.

Absolutely. And we're going to talk more about this later, but absolutely. Fundamental to every aspect of life is our reliance and dependence on God.And we want to be modeling that in the easy times, but also in the hard times. We want to be helping our kids to say, we can rest in this God. Yes, there are going to be hard things. I was reflecting on King David.You know, he wrote so many of the Psalms, some of those psalms he wrote while he was chilling out and the sheep were eating green grass and, you know, everything was happy. There are other times he's writing them in a cave when people are hunting him down to kill him.There are other times when he's sitting as king of the nation and everything's at peace. And also he's writing it when sin has overtaken his life and he needs to repent. But in all of that, the God he's speaking to has not changed.And even in his sin, his tendency is always to go back to that God and express himself to that God and ask God for things in those situations and rest in him. And that's what we want for our kids, isn't it?We're going to be talking about strategies and all sorts of really important and helpful things for helping our kids to grow. But first and foremost, that's what we want our kids to grow in a trust and reliance on our wonderful God.

Absolutely. Yeah. That's right. That's the central and most important thing.But how do we, on top of that, how do we go about supporting our kids through these big transitions in ways that are going to help them now and help them through future transitions as well? We want our children to be building skills and resilience and confidence as well.And now it's really interesting to look at the research in this area, and I'll put some citations, of course, as always, in the show notes.But looking at the research in this area, it's really interesting to see that a lot of people who offer supports to neurodivergent children through transitions will offer supports more in the moment of transition.In that first week of school, parents offering supports to children at the time when they have moved house, when the child joins the family, when whatever new thing might be changing in the home, and often forgetting to support before the transition as well. And there's another aspect that research has shown up too, which is often the supports are offered to the children.It's a strategy designed and built by an adult in their lives, handed to them, and they're shown how to use that strategy. And the child hasn't been part of working out what strategy would work for them.They haven't been part of thinking through how they want to interact with this new transition. And so they're kind of their agency has been taken from them and they're told, rely on adults, and we'll sort you out through this change.We'll help you adapt to existing programs. We'll show you how to operate like everyone else in this moment.

Yeah. And it doesn't help our children, does it?Like, it helps in the moment, but as soon as that's taken away, they're helpless because they have no skills, no ways forward. And that's really, really tricky.

Yeah, that's right.And I think in order to be able to help a child get to this place of being able to be someone who can determine what's going to happen in their life, someone who has agency, someone who has a little bit of control over some aspects, someone who knows they can be heard, we need to be helping a child build some of these skills in order for them to be able to get through this current transition well, and that'll help them through transitions in the future as well, without needing to just look to adults around saying, oh my goodness, what do I do? We're actually helping build their resilience. And so in education, we speak about three aspects, the that are really important.Autonomy, competence, and relatedness. And so we'll unpack these ideas. So we want to be building this.This autonomy, this sense of being listened to, this sense that you can be someone who can make change.And in order to help build this in our child, we need to be having conversations with them, listening to their concerns and inviting their concerns about the change, letting them express it in a communication style that works for them.So it might not be verbal, it might be using their communication tools, it might be using play, it might be using pictures that they can then map or change around, letting them have the ability to be able to speak when they need as well. Often that's at night when you wish the light could go off.And they just need to have this one last conversation, allowing them to also have some control over what's going to happen. And so this can be tricky. I remember when we were booking tickets back to Australia, the kids can't book the tickets back to Australia.They can't tell us which city to live in. But we could give them some autonomy over some of the aspects. What things can they choose? What things can they control?What things can I put in their hands to organize so that they then have some sort of autonomous input in that? And they can see that they're needed, they're participants in what's going on as well. And then there's competence.So it's kind of, you can see how that's related to the autonomy. But this is huge.How can we be building skills for this new environment, a new classroom, perhaps they might now need to have a pencil case in Class, can we get the pencil case months before so they can be practicing that they know to turn to the pencil case if they need pencils, they know how to open it.Can they go to the shops and choose a lunchbox if they're going to need a lunchbox and then work out how they want to use it, come back to you and say, actually I want a separate lunchbox for the sandwich aspect of my lunch or whatever it might be. Can they have some sort of autonomy and be building that competence as you're preparing for it?And then the other really important aspect of this is relatedness and so thinking through what relationships they're going to have in this new transition.So if it involves moving or moving church or moving school, moving grades within that school, working out who are the people they need to connect with, and figuring out how to help them begin to build either a two way relationship with them.So maybe that involves FaceTime or something like that, but even showing photos of the people, giving names of the people, places as well, being related to the locations they're going to, the places they're going to interact with. Before coming back to Australia, we looked at photos of family of the school that they'd be joining.A friend walked through the school and filmed what the school looked like so that we could see that sort of thing.And through all of this, again, looking at what communication style they're going to be able to need and working out how we can put in place systems before they arrive.So using the example of communication, if they use a tool to communicate and you're about to change churches, it can be so important to just meet with some of the staff at that new location and train them in using this communication tool. So that day one, when the child begins, they can be autonomous in using their communication style.They can be competent in knowing that they can communicate and begin relationships right from the start.And so sometimes thinking through these aspects as we look at the change can help us work out some of the things that we might naturally be missing if we haven't thought in these categories.

Yeah, those are really helpful things. In a sense, they're things that you want to do for your children regardless of whether they're neurodivergent or neurotypical.So my children are at a stage in life where they, three of them at least are thinking about moving out of the home.And all those things that you're sort of talking about are things that I am talking through with them at different times when they're willing to listen to help Prepare them. Because actually, they're going to be at a point where I won't be able to help them.I won't, because I'll just be that much further away from them as they take those steps.But really, we want to be doing that all through life and at a time where we can stand alongside them in whatever transition our kids are going through and be able to help them work through.And maybe for neurodivergent kids, there's actually gonna be more of that and we're gonna need to be thinking about more detail in what we're talking through. Things that other people, neurotypical people, might take for granted. The neurodivergent child is gonna need more scaffolding and support for that.But we wanna be alongside them, talking through that for the long term so that they're prepared for the long term and that sort of thinking is built into their awareness rather than just relying on you as the parent to do it all for them.

Yeah, that's so important, isn't it? That's right. This is. This is building that ability to be part of it, to manage it, and it helps them prepare, doesn't it, to.To be active in this, rather than sitting back and just being washed along by this massive change that's happening. To be active actually helps use some of that nervous energy and some of that concern that might be happening.They've got a few things in their control that they can picture because they're already participating in that. So it helps in so many ways as we look ahead to transition.So as we look at something that's coming up, it's really helpful to prepare early many months in advance, depending on what the transition is and how big it is. It's really good to prepare early. And that preparation's going to kind of go through a few phases.And, I mean, you've probably seen this in your kids as things are coming. There's a point of time where they're not even ready to chat about it in this stage. Bring it up as you can. They don't really want to engage.They're not concerned. They're not thinking about it. But it's still important to have it in the conversation.

Absolutely. We've talked in previous episodes, haven't we, about how sometimes our neurodivergent children can't cope with change in. In the moment.So they're working on a particular task and you say, oh, can you just go and clear the dishwasher? And it's like, whoa, that's a. That's that's, you know, too big a change even for a simple task like that.So then think about that in relation to changing school or changing church or whatever it is. And so the more advanced notice they have, the more time they have for their brain just to get into a zone where they are ready to contemplate it.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Actually, contemplate is exactly the word. There's pre. Contemplation. There you go. And then move into contemplation stage.So when they're ready to think about it, this is a great moment to be thinking through those photos, those videos, like we were saying, looking at the change, looking at what it's going to be like and to be asking questions. Don't be scared to ask about what they're worried about, what they're concerned about. We don't want to be putting some sort of gloss or veneer on it.It's all going to be fine. It's safe and great to talk about. What are you worried about? About the change? What are you going to miss about what life is like before this change?And it's fine for you to be talking about things too, about. Yeah, I'm going to miss seeing my friend down the road each week when we move house.Because the reality is change comes with sadness and loss and that is part of it. And ignoring that isn't going to help, but it also comes with opportunities and things that will be good.And so actually naming those things that we're looking forward to will really help recognize that there are positive things about this coming change as well.

Yeah, we don't help our children if we think, oh, we want them to enjoy this new change. And so we're just going to be positive in everything.There's real grief in change and, and naming that and naming that in yourself so that they see that you're a real person and you're actually modeling at that point how you're working through those changes, both in thinking about the things to grieve, but also thinking about the things to look forward to.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And that stage, that'll probably go for quite some time.So if you can give that some months, that's really important because things will be chewed over.And sometimes naming these things once they're named and you think them through, in fact, that's not actually that important or I didn't need that anyway.And so it helps to have these on the table so that you can be discussing them and then you want to be kind of Be ready to start to prepare for the next things. And so we've talked about preparing with pencil cases or lunchboxes that might be used. It can also be the matter of preparing for timetables.If they're going to need to be able to read timetables or school maps, learning how to be able to interpret those. If that's an important aspect. It's also preparing for things that are familiar now that can continue into the transition.So if there's a bag that they really enjoy holding and they might be able to take it through to the new transition, they'll be able to take it to the new church and they'll be able to still put their special things in it even after the baby's born, whatever it might be to have that now, that special thing now, and be focusing on what will it be like to also have that at the new church. Won't that be nice to still have that and to be carrying some of these familiar things through into the new.The new space or the new phase of life that they might be heading into?

Yeah.Alongside of that, I think praying at every stage just keeps reinforcing that fact that God is there in every stage and he's here now before the changes happen, and he's there after the changes happened. And so just continuing to remember to.

Do that, that's such an important part of preparing, isn't it? Yeah, that's such a helpful reminder that preparing means leaning on God as well through this.And preparing also means working out how you're going to leave this other stage of life. And so if you're leaving a place or leaving people, how are you going to say goodbye? What's a gift you might be able to give?What's a thing you might say? What's something you might want to write down? And that can be quite helpful as well in processing that this relationship is about to change.When we're leaving France, we went to each of our most special locations. The playgrounds we loved the parks, we loved the gardens, we loved all of this sort of thing.And we'd collect a couple of little things from there and then we put them in epoxy resin. It's like a. I don't. It's like liquid plastic. You put it in a mold and it goes hard.And so now we have all these little key rings with a little something from each of these spaces.

That's so good.

Yeah, there was something nice about going, we're taking a piece of this with us. You can't bring things like seeds and leaves and stuff into Australia. So it has to be in resin if you want to bring it with you.But that was part of leaving. Well, so what can your child be bringing with them? And this is another thing you can hand into their hands.How would you like to bring some of the old into the new? How would you like to say goodbye to people? Who would you like to say goodbye to and help them be part of that as they're moving on as well?

Yeah. What I love about that is it says the thing that we're leaving doesn't stop being a part of us. It's been an important part of our life.And we're not just chucking that in the bin. We take that with us in a. To a degree. Like it's not there in the same way, but it's not thrown away.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Exactly. And then kind of the next bit of transitions is when you actually transition into the new place.So it's when you actually step into that new house, the new church, the new school, whatever it might be, the new grade. It's that moment when the baby is born or the girls. It's that moment when their first period arrives.And you've been preparing for this transition, you know that's coming. That's tricky because you don't know what date that's going to arrive, but it's still something that can be prepared for. And when.When you're in this moment of transition, the first time, when it's beginning, you want to be putting into practice these routines, these systems that you've already been practicing and getting ready. And so you'll be stepping into some familiar things because you've practiced them. And you just.Dave, you and I were already talking about how exhausting it is and how so much stuff will go out the window. You just have to allow that. And if we are stressed about that or think it's forever, it's not healthy for us.But it's also not great for our kids to be picking up on all of that stress. We're going to be exhausted. Some days of school. School might be missed, if that's helpful for some kids.Some afternoons might mean just family board games instead of tidying or eating a healthy meal or whatever it might be, whatever is important to your family and be trying to work out how to have time together, time to process. And other things will fall off because you can't do everything in those really tricky moments of transition.

Totally. And again, that's modeling.So, you know, if it was Just me and my wife, before we had kids, if we were going through a big house move or something like that, or a big change, things were different for a while. And so we're drawing our kids into that. We're talking them through it.We're modeling how we do things in this particular stage, but also then how we move back to things that might be healthier long term. And just we're allowing by.By modeling that we're contributing towards those skills that they're going to have in the future to be able to do that themselves.

Yeah. Yeah, that's. That's right, isn't it? And part of these conversations is what's. What's working? Well, you know, we prepared for you to have a lunchbox.Is that working? Do you like that lunchbox? Can you open it? Are you too stressed at lunchtime to be able to eat the things we're giving you? Do we need to readjust?And sometimes these reassessments can feel like we're going backwards. Wait, but we prepared for three months that you would have this pencil case, and now we're reassessing whether a pencil case is even what you want.It can feel like we're going backwards.And the funny thing is, research has shown that a really important way of going through transitions is to just allow these loops backwards for a time to be able to go, this isn't working. We're reassessing. We're going to go back to kind of this preparation time where we're thinking through, what supports do you need?How would you like to be interacting with this environment? How can I help? And you, you know, put in these new things that you've designed, and sometimes you need to reassess those as well.And over time, that will become less and less necessary. The transition will happen. It takes longer for most neurodivergent children. Allow that as well. But over time, there'll be wins that we can celebrate.We still need to be checking in regularly. We still need to be ready to adjust strategies. But it's really lovely to kind of pause and go, wow, okay, six months ago, this was really hard.Six months ago, we didn't even know what this would be like. And look, now we have these friends. Now we have this routine. Now we're enjoying this playground that we didn't even know existed at that time.Now we're enjoying nap time in our household. Whereas nap time wasn't here, but with the baby it is, or whatever it might be.

Yeah. And in that saying thank you to God, like saying wow, God, you've helped bring us this far. You've given us these new things.And just keeping that God consciousness through the whole process there at the end, saying, hey, look at this. We prayed about this and God has looked after us. Oh, there's still a hard thing that we're trying to deal with. Okay, let's pray about that.But coming back and saying, oh, but look, there are so many good things that God has given us that we would never have thought of ourselves but God had in store for us.You know, when I was a pastor in a church, often I would have new people coming into the church who are moving from a different situation, different church.And so often they had a really positive church experience in the past, whether that was their immediate church experience previous to this one or one further back. And they're searching and seeking out that type of experience.And I'd have to say to them, look, we want to welcome you, we want to help you into our church, and we want you to have a really great experience, experience in that church. But why was that previous experience so good? So often? It was because of the relationships you had. You'd known those people for 10, 15, 20 years.You'd laughed with those people, you'd cried with those people. In our new church, that takes time. There is nothing we can do to speed that up. But we want to help you through that transition.We want to pray with you through it. We want to help you to build relationships.And the relationships won't be exactly the same as what you had before, but they will be new relationships that God has in store for you. And that's a really good thing. And we want to think, okay, well, how does church work out here?Because, sad to say, we can't repeat what happened before. But how can we look for what's good in this new situation? And we want to be doing that with our kids as well.We want to be helping them come into this new stage of life and learn about how to function and enjoy that new stage while not forgetting the goodness of what came before. We've talked a few times through the episode that we want to keep God central to the picture of change. Change is our experience. Change is our life.And we want to prepare our children for that change. But we also want to be saying that God never, ever, ever changes. So in Malachi3.6, God says, for I am the Lord and I do not change.I was thinking about Jonah, Jonah, when he was thinking about how he was going to respond to God when God gave him a task to do.He knew exactly why God was giving him that task because it was related to God's character, the character that God had told Moses about a thousand years before. But in that thousand years, Jonah knew for a fact that God had not changed. Unfortunately, he responded in a really bad way to that.But it's actually a really good thing that God does not change. He never changes.

It makes me think of Hebrews 13, 8. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.We are absolutely certain that with the world changing around us, the Lord don't change at all. And I think it's wonderful that we can be fixing our eyes on Jesus and, you know, through Hebrews.It's full of teaching about what Jesus has done and strong encouragements for us to remain faithful to Jesus and to hold, hold fast to our confidence. And as we go through those changes, we need to have this for our own aim and for the aim of our kids. Yeah, it's just.It's a really helpful, I think, way for us to be ending all of this on change to think about God who doesn't change. So.

Absolutely. And as parents, I mean, we talk about it for our kids, but as parents, we need to get that into our heart and soul.Because parenting is all about change, isn't it? What our child is at two is not what our child is at two and a half and what not what they are or who they are at 5 and 10 and 15.So we're constantly going through change, but God is with us all through that. What are we going to be talking about next week, Kate?

Yes, Next week we have our first special guest of season two. We have Marie Gergis joining us.She's a counsellor, and we're going to put some hard questions to her about parenting and also about marriage, and particularly marriage when there are a couple of different neurotypes in the marriage, a neurotypical person, neurodivergent person, or different types of neurodivergence in the marriage. Some things that are challenging, some tips and some things to think through. So Mari's great, and I know that's gonna be an excellent episode.

Yeah, it's gonna be really good. I'm really looking forward to that one. As someone who has a neurotypical wife, when I'm neurodivergent, so I just use it for my own counseling.But everyone, thank you so much for listening for our first episode for season two, please make sure you subscribe on whatever app you're listening to, and we would love you to share this episode and the podcast as a whole, with friends, with family. Tell people that this is a resource out there because we want to keep helping more and more people.But for now, thank you for listening, and we'll talk again next week.

See you later. Hi, I'm Kate Morris.

And I'm Dave Whittingham.

Many neurodivers. It's a long word, that one.

It's only at the heart of our podcast.

I'll learn it one day. Yeah.

And Kate, great to have you here as well.

It's great to be here. Isn't it great to be starting a new season at the beginning of a new year?

Absolutely. Sorry.

Or is it not great?