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Pook
Deinonychus
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16 Sep 2010, 9:02 pm

Dd is in her first year of kindegarten and as I've posted elsewhere we are experiencing some spectrum issues. She loves school, but her behavior sometimes Oy vey.

My question is she has family and friends here and is an only currently will a move cause complete behavior chaos as they are creatures of habit? Will relocating a few hundred miles away be a bad choice for her or do these children adapt better then parent's believe will occur?

I myself am not that social so I dread it, but I am concerned about my daughter. Dh tells me I think too hard and that she will be fine in a few months.



bjtao
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17 Sep 2010, 11:36 am

All hell broke loose with my son when I changed his school for the first time ever - he was 7 years old. Up to then, yes, he was different, but it didn't cause any problems, so I never knew to seek 'help' or diagnosis for him. After changing schools it was like a monster came out of him. We just received a diagnosis a few months ago (he is 10 yo). I started looking for help/diagnosis when he was 7 yo. Some of the docs believe it was the major change of switching schools that sent him into this tizzy - his secure world where everything was the same was shaken up.

I applaud you for knowing to ask about this and prepare for it. After what we experienced, I highly reccomend you consult your child's doctor or a specialist about what to expect and how to handle it. It is a bit more complicated than pep talks and security blankets.



Pook
Deinonychus
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17 Sep 2010, 1:22 pm

Thnx for the support and the heads up bjtao. I am praying that another position is offered as her grandparents and our family is so helpful and I don't want to loose that support. Between my daughter and myself my husband is ADD, but is a bit too optimistic and it will be difficult for me to get out there are create social networks. I don't know that he gets that.



annotated_alice
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17 Sep 2010, 2:59 pm

I guess I would say that it depends on what you are moving from and to, and why you are moving. We moved my sons across the country halfway through grade 1. It was not easy on them, but we did everything we could to prepare them for the transition and to ease them through it. Their school in the old place was not so good. We made sure that their new school was one of the best in the city (researched the schools and then purposely purchased a home in the catchment area of the one we liked best). I am a SAHM and this move gave my husband greater earning potential and job security, allowing me to continue to stay at home as long as our sons need. So for us the benefits of the new place outweighed the difficulty of the transition.

That being said my husband passed up a considerable promotion last year which would have required a move, so that we can stay where we are now. My sons are now older, and we feel that the transition would be even more traumatic for them now (plus things are going OK for them at school socially, if they weren't we would feel differently about a move and a fresh start).

BTW I am not very social either. We have lived here almost 4 years and I have made 0 friends, several acquaintances, but no one I would call up and invite out for coffee. I am not lonely, because I am so busy with my family and I am in touch with my good friends over the internet and phone, plus my social requirements do seem to be lower than most people. :) My sons have each made a couple of friends though, and I figure that is the important thing.



DW_a_mom
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17 Sep 2010, 7:24 pm

I think annotated Alice summarized it really well. Yes, moves can be hard, but that has to be measured against what will be gained. When a family decides that a move is necessary, do your best to explain the situation and prepare the child.

You can't avoid change; change is a part of life. But you can avoid unnecessary change, and you can avoid poorly handled change.


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Mom to an amazing young adult AS son, plus an also amazing non-AS daughter. Most likely part of the "Broader Autism Phenotype" (some traits).


number5
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17 Sep 2010, 8:34 pm

We just moved to a different state with our 5 yo aspie son and everything, so far, has gone way better than our expectations. He did have some friends from our old neighborhood and pre-k that he had to leave behind and on rare occasion he says he misses them, but overall he has loved our new adventure. I asked him if he wanted to stay in touch with his old friends and he said "why?" :lol:

Our change was quite drastic as well - from country to city with significant downsizing (he now has to share a room with his baby sister), and even still, he has just rolled along with it happily. I think a lot of it has to do with the tone set by the parents. We really tried to make it sound as fun and exciting as possible, even though unemployment and a rough financial situation was the real cause for the move. We spent lots of time researching everything from playgrounds to school districts to zoos and his special interests in order to make it go smoothly and to try to keep it positive.

In some ways, I think it has been easier because he is an aspie. He doesn't seem to have the same social attachments as NT children might have. I did try to make our new home as similar to our old home as possible (our lanlord let us pick the same wall colors as our previous home and I'm still trying to get our same pictures up on the walls) because he loves it when things are the same.

I'm also not very social. I have no nearby friends and that's just fine by me - too busy and tired anyway. I've always got my hubby :) . My son does a WAY better job at making friends.



petrel
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17 Sep 2010, 9:07 pm

As a caveat, my child is yet undiagnosed. We're working on that. But we have a lot of aspie-ish issues either way.

We move every couple of years with my husband's job. I would say for sure that my daughter has a strong preference for sameness, but at the same time, as the previous poster reported, she has done well with moves. In her case, I've found that as long as what we're doing is clearly laid out for her ahead of time she can generally do it very well. We start by mentioning that the move might be happening as early as a year out or more, and discuss more specifics regularly as the time approaches. I have to give my kids reminders every day of what will be coming up... tomorrow we are doing x, y, and z at this time and it will take approximately this long, next week we have this this and this, we will be moving out of the house on X day in 4 weeks, etc. We go through this every single day for everything we're going to do that involves her remotely (apparently this is not normal but it is normal for us).

I also make sure that the kids rooms are set up basically the same way in every house, I get the house put together as quickly as possible as well, and we stick to as much or our basic routine as possible regardless of location. I spell out deviations from the routine in advance as much as possible and remind and remind and remind that it will be happening. (This last bit is the key to success in our family.) We also spend a lot of time looking forward to the adventure of a new place. My daughter likes to travel and seems to enjoy -at least intellectually- seeing famous places and comparing the zoos or museums or whatever from one place to the next, etc. We play up these things as much as possible.

In our case at least, I agree that in some ways the aspie bit can be helpful. Sad, but my daughter has no social connections outside of our family. The plus side is she is never sad to leave a place. Her main world is our family and house and as long as that remains as solid as I can keep it, she's fine. She basically hates school everywhere and is generally pretty detached from the school experience it seems, it doesn't appear to matter to her very much which school it is.... they're all the same in all the ways that count. Seems like doesn't care much about her school, so what's a different one?

I guess we do tend to have misunderstandings with teachers and lower grades in the beginning at new schools.... this is where we generally see stress arising. She can't figure out what the teachers want from her and or how to do what they want. After a while, with help from us, we sort out exactly what she needs to do for each teacher and she can generally get there. This happens when we don't move, though, too, as she changes teachers each year anyway. It's worse after a move though.

Still, overall, our experience with moving has been positive. I feel she's gotten more benefits from moving and living different places - where she really does thrive on the intellectual interesting aspects of all of that -than she's suffered from any stress.