Moving house with asd child who hates change

[joeysapple]

Would really appreciate some advice.

I would like to move house. My son gets really distressed about this. He doesn't have a DX of ASD but has "ASD traits" and ADHD, and he hates change.

Every time I broach the subject of moving, he gets really upset. He doesn't want to move, he likes it here, etc. He gets distressed about people coming here for viewings. We would be moving to a bigger house, but he doesn't care about that. The uncertainty of the moving process and timelines would be really hard on him too.

Any tips on how to handle this from people who have been through it?

I'm wondering whether to conduct viewings whilst he's not here, and then only involve him once we're looking for new places.

Alternatively, just to accept I'm stuck here until he's older!

I would try writing a social story about the change and reading it regularly. There is advise online about writing them. It might be easier to do when the details are fixed, such as where you are going and when.

In don't have a child with ASD but do have a child who gets unsettled by change and uncertainty.
For mine, I would do as much of the process as humanly possible without them, and present it as a done deal. i.e. Out of house during viewings, only visit chosen house once exchange of contracts is due/done.

I have a son with ASD (he’s now 31) and honestly the best way I found to help him cope with any change was to present it as a done deal. We moved into our current house 16 years ago. He didn’t want to move but says now that he was “being silly” and it was a great move for us. As he’s got older he’s accepted he doesn’t really like change but has learned it’s just a part of life. I think that the more you try and involve him in the move the more distressed he’ll become. I understand that instinctively you want him involved and on board with it. That seems logical. But I think it’s that involvement that contributes to the distress, if you see what I mean? My DS copes so much better with just a plain “this is what’s happening” and he then just adapts. I have always had one eye on the fact that in order to thrive my DS needed to learn to live in the “real world”. So while I did take his ASD into account, I did also push him out of his comfort zone quite often. I feel it worked because he got a degree, has travelled and worked abroad and has a large circle of friends. None of which would have seemed possible when he was younger.

My DS sounds similar to yours. No DX, but asd traits. He coped with the move much better than I'd expected. The anticipation was worse than the actual move. We sent him to stay with a relative for the move weekend and made sure his room was all set up and ready when he came back.

My DS accepts things he considers inevitable though, it's more things that he thinks he has a choice about that he struggles with. Good luck.

Like Keds, both my children find it easier to accept things they feel are inevitable than trying to make choices. It's a fine line between giving them enough warning and information to process a change and not giving them too much time to build up more anxiety. It also means we have to be quite careful in how we present things, only offering the slightest hint of a choice if they genuinely have a choice in the matter.

Moving house was very much a given, so we didn't really mention it specifically till we were quite a way into the process. We tried to do house viewing when they were at school to avoid them being confused by seeing lots of differnt houses.

Again we didn't tell them that much about the viewings on our house, but did make sure they were always out. That was actually one of the harder bits, random unscheduled trips to the park were not something DS in particular found easy.

Once we were underway with all the legal stuff we involved them much more, looking at photos of the new house reading lots of books, walking past the new house regularly and reassuring them about which things would not change.

Much as I wanted to used moving as a big declutter, we didn't feel it was the right time to do that with their stuff. Even favourite to small clothes moved from one draw to the next to keep their stuff as familiar as we could. We kept them off school on move day, so they could see the whole process of everything being loaded and unloaded. We did have a friend over for the day to keep anthem so we could focus on the move and I think it was good for them to see it all happen rather than go to school then home to a new house.

Thanks all, really helpful x