Helping Families Navigate School Transitions, Neurodiversity and Special Educational Needs Abroad

Moving countries brings enough logistics for any family, but for parents raising a neurodiverse child or a child with learning differences, relocation can raise a whole extra set of questions: will this new country’s schools understand my child’s needs? Will we be able to access the support we relied on back home? 

We spoke with family therapist Judith Wides, who has spent more than 30 years working with international families across a dozen countries, about the biggest challenges families face when they move, how to evaluate a school’s real readiness to support a child, and what she’s learned about helping parents become confident advocates for their children, wherever in the world they land.

Meet Judith Wides: A Family Therapist with Over 3 Decades of Global Experience

I am a family therapist by training. I have 30+ years of global experience helping parents of children with neurodiversity and special educational needs navigate school and family life transitions with strength and clarity. In addition, I offer coaching and workshops for educators, and school leadership to build flourishing inclusive communities rooted in compassion, synergy, and respect for all learners.

How Coaching Across a Dozen Countries Has Shaped Judith’s Approach

When coaching families today, I start with humility and curiosity. National boundaries are only a small part of the picture. No two families are alike. The local context dictates the availability of resources and the key is in helping families create the life they want while also helping them to understand how community and school resources can support them.

We are living in a time of incredible global mobility. Families are creating a sense of home that is more about human connection than about geography and borders, and I think that is incredibly powerful and exciting.

It is also essential to recognize that children are different now. They are digital natives and global citizens because they have access to the whole world in their pocket, if they have a phone. Technology has changed the way children interface with culture and relationship building. Supporting children and families in finding balance with technology is key to creating strong family relationships, especially for those navigating multiple languages and cultural contexts.

What Drew Judith Into Family Therapy

As a family therapist, I know that family is about love and connection, not about geography, passports and languages. I am fortunate to be a person who can adapt to living anywhere and I feel refreshed by doing so.

I absolutely adore the challenge of figuring out how to make life work in a new context. The first few experiences I had living overseas there was no internet, so it was slower going to try to figure out logistics like school opportunities, transportation, housing, everything, but I loved it.

When I was young, I did not realise that not everyone felt the same way I did. Some families had a really hard time adjusting to life away from their geographical home. We were living in Italy when my daughter was a baby and it was just before the internet exploded. Back then it was hard to find more than a handful of professionals who could support families.

I became an expert in child and family mental health because I believed that every family had a unique path to finding equilibrium. No parent should suffer in silence with worries about developmental differences, or a relationship that is floundering, or a school that is not meeting a child’s needs.

Supporting Expat Families Through Relocation

The Biggest Challenges Families Face When They Move Abroad

From my experience, the challenges families face can vary tremendously. Some of it depends on why the family is abroad. If they are a diplomatic family it is very different from a digital nomad family.

Despite the sense of adventure that comes from being away from a home country, even if by absolute choice, there can be issues of loneliness, isolation and depression, especially during early postpartum months, or when a couple is struggling in their relationship. I always say it takes about three years for a new place to feel like home, and in those first three years a lot can go lopsided for a family.

Access to Support for Developmental Differences Abroad

The other challenge I address a lot are developmental differences. If a child is born with special needs while overseas it can become an absolute train wreck for a family because they may not be able to access high quality early intervention services. It has been eye opening for me to learn about the tremendous diversity of practices that are considered standard in different countries.

It can be particularly challenging for families that originated in, or spent a lot of time in, places like Australia, Canada, the UK and the US, where there is a greater acceptance of neurodiversity amongst children and adults, and as a result, more integration of supports and resources into schools and daily life. 

What has been humbling and eye opening in all of my travels is recognising that some cultures still try to hide away children with neurodiversity and learning difference, while sometimes, in unexpected places, you can find incredible efforts to promote inclusion and support.

Often, even in cultures where inclusion is not the norm in schools, good things can really happen when parents are supported in becoming advocates and they can build a collective voice for change.

Feeling isolated is the hardest thing when becoming a parent, and then it is particularly hard if your child has unmet needs because of a lack of services. When parents are supported in becoming advocates for their children, especially when they can find like-minded parents in their community, good things will happen.

How Judith Helps Families Choose the Right School Abroad

Tantamount to the success of integrating a child into a new school community is exploring how open a school is to building a collaborative relationship with a family. Often that is where I can be most helpful, in being a bridge, and a thought partner between a family and a school.

The first step is always to look at what supports the school has in place. Do they have learning support specialists? If so, then we need to meet with the learning support team to understand what they can offer and who they serve well. In addition, a family must speak with other families to hear about their experiences.

What Judith Looks For in a School’s Practices

My work always includes carefully reviewing where the professionals on site received their training. This helps me evaluate and anticipate how contemporary their practices will likely be. It is also really important to get a clear picture of what teacher training looks like in the new country, and if it includes support for diverse learners. Finally, looking at how a school documents progress over time is essential. Are they data driven in their practices, and do they know how to plan for, implement and evaluate interventions in a systematic fashion?

As a professional who has worked in school-based settings since the 1990s, I have a very deep sense of how to support school leaders and parents to work together to ensure that students are thriving. Many parents may not be aware that education is a highly researched field and that there are empirically validated global practices that have been identified as best practices across settings.

Parents come to depend on my expertise to help them grow in their capacity to advocate for their children and build strong relationships with teachers and school leaders grounded in those best practices.

Supporting Parents of Neurodiverse Children Abroad

Well, in addition to what I mentioned above about helping families navigate school decisions and the home and school relationship, a lot of my work comes down to the specifics of the disabilities or learning challenges of the child. The age of the child and the cultural context dictate a great deal about what systems may be in place for support. Helping families find what they need, while also helping them manage their stress and anxiety, is the sweet spot for my services.

From a parent coaching perspective my role is to promote balance, so that the whole family is not derailed, and that all the relationships in the family continue to thrive.

Sometimes when a child is identified as having special needs, a parent may recognise for the first time that they may also be learning differently, and a lot of big feelings may come up for that parent.

In these cases, my job is to help parents work on their feelings about their own differences, while also staying focused on creating a robust plan for their child. This is how my combined training as a family therapist, and a school-based practitioner, works in tandem to best support keeping the whole family moving forward with enhanced understanding.

How Children and Parents Experience Relocation Differently

Parents have their heads full of logistics. They want everything fully set up yesterday. For children, a lot depends on age. Older children, particularly adolescents, sometimes have the hardest time adjusting because they are at the stage developmentally where their peer relationships and their hobbies or passions are the strongest driving factors in their lives.

As teens, they have started the path toward independence, yet in a new setting, they may struggle to find that balance point between burgeoning independence and the need for family stability. The good news is that they also usually have access to devices that can help them stay connected to friends in other locations, which can ease the transition. However, parental oversight is key in order to ensure that teens do not become overly dependent on their devices in lieu of building relationships in their new setting.

Younger children will also miss friends, grandparents, and familiar routines more acutely. For them, establishing new routines is key to family stability, as well as feeling strongly connected to their parents emotionally. The challenge is often that parents are distracted by the logistics of settling in at exactly the same time that children need them to be emotionally present. With young children, that is usually when we see the most off track behaviour. In tough moments of transition, I can help families re-calibrate with each other, and find a greater sense of connection and contentment in their new home.

Visit judithwides.com to find out more about Judith’s coaching services, or counseling.judithwides.com if you’re seeking licensed family therapy.

About Judith Wides

Judith Wides holds an M.A. and M.Ed., is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), a BACP registered practitioner in the UK, and a Clinical Fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) in the US.

With more than 30 years of global experience, she has spent her career supporting couples, parents and professionals to improve their communication and collaboration skills. Her coaching practice spans couples communication coaching, parent coaching, with particular expertise supporting parents of neurodiverse children and children with learning differences, adolescent mentoring, and women’s health.

FAQ

What does Judith Wides specialise in?

Judith is a family therapist and coach specialising in supporting expat families through relocation, school transitions and neurodiversity. 

Does Judith work with families who have children with special needs?

Yes. She has particular expertise supporting parents of neurodiverse children and children with learning differences, including helping families evaluate school support systems and advocate for their child.

How does Judith help families choose the right school abroad?

She looks at what learning support a school has in place, the training background of its staff, and how systematically it documents and evaluates student progress, while also encouraging families to speak with other parents about their own experiences.

Is Judith’s coaching only for people living abroad?

No. While she has deep expertise supporting expat and internationally mobile families, her parent coaching is open to anyone, wherever they’re based.

How long does a typical coaching engagement with Judith last?

Judith’s model is short term and outcomes focused. She typically recommends committing to four or five sessions up front, then adapts the pace, whether weekly, monthly, or ad hoc, to suit the client.

Can Judith help with therapy as well as coaching?

Yes. Alongside her coaching practice, Judith is a licensed Family Therapist and sees clients in Washington, DC, New Jersey, and the UK and Northern Ireland through her counselling website.

Read more articles about relocation and family life abroad on the MumAbroad blog.