Productive Conversations Help Reduce Marital Strain in Neurodiverse Families

I recently had the pleasure of speaking on Paul Carroll’s podcast about “What ASD Dads need to hear about marital strain and healthy dialogue.” Paul is the founder of AutismDadvocate.org, an online support community for extraordinary fathers who navigate the world of parenting and autism. The opportunity to share my experiences and insights with caregivers of autistic and other neurodiverse children allowed me to address some common communication challenges that parents face, and offer suggestions to create more productive conversations and outcomes.

I’ve outlined below a few highlights from my conversation with Paul, but I encourage you to listen to the full, 30-minute podcast for more detailed discussion.  

Why Listen to Me?

As a father of three neurodiverse children who currently attend three different schools, our family deals with a lot of complexity and challenges. Every day, my wife and I juggle the various—and many—moving parts because our children are different ages, engage in different activities, and each need different supports and services to help them navigate academics, social-emotional issues and their various learning differences. While we as parents can maintain strong alignment most of the time, we’ve also learned and gathered skills from responding to the many ways that things have gone sideways over the years. 

My approach as a mediator for parents in neurodiverse families benefits from these experiences, as well as the tools and resources accumulated over the years as a parent. In fact, these experiences were central motivations to the creation of my mediation practice focused on helping other parents have their own productive conversations so that they can stay aligned.

Communication is a Necessity, Not a Luxury

Communication issues can be stressors or salves, depending both on WHETHER we communicate with our partner (or not) and HOW we communicate with each other. Prioritize time to check in with each other. Especially when the stakes are high and parental consistency and alignment are crucial. 

Communication Builds Trust and Resilience

When communication breaks down—and it will from time-to-time—how you recover can build trust and resilience and bolster your parenting team over time. When you are stressed or know you can’t devote your attention to your partner, it may be helpful to postpone important conversations. Consider scheduling a specific time to focus and check in with each other later, so that both of you can mentally prepare, be more focused and attentive and have a more productive discussion.  

Engage in Conversations, Not Presentations

In my mediation practice, one of the most frequent desires expressed is “just wanting to be heard.” Effective communication involves more than talking “at” each other. Ideally, it involves approaching the discussion as a vehicle for listening to — and hearing — each other, so that you can explore what’s possible and work towards a solution having buy-in from everyone involved.  This can be difficult to do when dealing with the day-to-day requirements of managing a family, particularly one with needs.

As a result, conversations can fall into a pattern where partners, in effect, present and then defend their ideas and positions—taking an “or” approach to each other’s contributions at the expense of a possible “and” that builds upon both of their strengths and perspectives. Stephen Covey’s fifth Habit of Highly Effective People is on point: “seek first to understand, then to be understood.”  

Creating an environment where you welcome and collaboratively explore each other’s ideas into the discussion, instead of reacting to them can change the dynamic—and the trajectory—of your conversation. To help shift to a more constructive, collaborative approach, I suggest the following as useful guiding principles to practice:

• Be attentive:  Use body language, facial expressions, and of course words that demonstrate that you hear, understand — and value – what  your partner is saying.
• Be interested: Understand your partner’s thought processes. They may have insights and perspectives that you haven’t considered.
• Be curious: Ask questions. Echo back what your partner is saying to ensure that you are “getting it.”
• Be patient: Don’t just wait to respond to each other. Listen, process and then respond. 
• Be creative: Don’t be afraid to consider, together, new ideas or approaches. The process of generating ideas can lead to new possibilities that you may not otherwise have considered.  

   Listen to the full podcast 

Mediation is Another Resource Available to Strengthen Parenting 

I’m often asked to describe the difference between therapy and mediation. Both are resources for neurodiverse families that can complement each other in helping to reduce conflict, improve communications and strengthen relationships. Here are the main differences:

• Therapy tends to be focused primarily on the affected relationships and their emotional drivers, and tends to be a longer – and broader – journey and exploration. 
• Mediation is more akin to tactical problem-solving and assisted negotiation; it’s a more narrowly focused, shorter-term process that is centered on addressing a defined, specific set of issues in a concrete manner. In that sense, it can be described as more limited in time and scope than therapy.

As parents, we need a variety of support resources for ourselves, our partnership team and our kids. It can start by acknowledging when “I need support,” which can be incredibly hard for parents, especially dads, to say. 

Always Practice Patience

If I could leave you with one thought, it’s this—have patience with yourself and with others in your family. As parents of neurodiverse children, we’re all trying to do our best in our unique situations. Continue to work hard, move forward, and seek out support when needed.

Click here to listen to the full podcast

I’d like to extend a special thank you to Paul Carroll for hosting me on his podcast. It was such a rewarding experience and I appreciated the chance to address some common communication challenges faced by parents of neurodiverse families. We could have spent so much more time delving into these issues that I’ll be exploring them in future blog posts, so stay tuned! And if one of these areas is a pain point for you and your partner, I’m here to help.   

Erik M. Feig is the founder of Feig Mediation Group.  He helps parents have constructive conversations when they get stuck on important issues, particularly when decisions involving neurodiversity and special needs are on the line.  If you’re interested in creating a more successful path to aligned parenting, contact me at Erik@FeigMediationGroup.com or visit our website.