After 13 years, our family will be leaving Jeddah in June. There are many reasons, but suffice it to say that after 17 total years in the Middle East (4 in Abu Dhabi, 13 in Jeddah), we’re ready for a change of scenery.
Daniel and I have been stressing about how to break it to Noah and Samuel, who have both grown up here and know no other home. They have so many memories, and life-long friendships, and have often talked about “never wanting to leave Jeddah” – especially after they just watched Gabriel move away to university. So, we were anticipating some serious tears and possibly a meltdown or two.
We decided to use the Disney/Pixar movie, Inside Out (a family favorite) as a foundation to introduce the topic of moving away. Inside Out follows an 11-year old girl named Riley and the many emotions she feels when her family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco. The great thing about this movie is it shows that it is OK to feel sad, or angry, or afraid, or disgusted. It’s natural. And although Riley wants to remain happy throughout the moving process, it’s impossible – she learns that we must allow ourselves to feel other emotions in order to work our way back to happiness. She ends up loving her new life, while never forgetting the old.
We watched the movie together, then walked them through the social story. We highlighted all the wonderful memories we’ve created here, but that it’s time to move on to a new home. We reinforced the fact that we will all feel MANY different emotions this year – and that’s OK – but no matter where we go next (to be determined…), we will still be a family, be together, and love each other as much as we do now.
I am SO HAPPY to say that it went extremely well – MUCH better than expected. Yes, there were a few tears initially – but they both visibly relaxed when we showed them the slide with the calendar – so they saw that this is not happening for a long time (10 months..). (I can’t imagine what the reaction would’ve been had we waited until June.)
They both seemed to leave the conversation with a sense of calm acceptance, understanding and security.
Now, I’m very familiar with delayed reactions, so we’re still on guard – but it’s been about 5 hours since we had our conversation, and so far, so good. Pray for us!
I’ve included all the slides of our social story below – which started out with reinforcing our lives here and their memories, and then we moved into the why, where, and what happens next.
Never underestimate the power of social stories and Disney Pixar movies. 🙂
Autismdreamx3 