When fatherhood is far from typical

Parenthood is an unpredictable journey, full of twists, turns and unexpected revelations - especially when you’re parenting a neurodiverse child – as Zed musician Nathan King knows all too well.

In the second season of Parents We’ve Met, co-hosts Jenny Hale and Dayna Galloway are joined for a chat on the couch by musician and songwriter Nathan King.

The lead singer recently reunited with his band Zed, after almost two decades, to release a fresh new album, Future Memory.

As a devoted dad of three, Nathan shares candidly about family life and the unique struggles that he and his wife, Rachel, have faced while raising a son with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.

He shares how the neurological differences have added layers of complexity to their parenting journey but have also presented as “superpowers” in surprising ways.

“For people listening who have a child with neurodiversity and they're parenting them, it's so, so hard and I love you and you're doing an amazing job,” he tells Parents We’ve Met, through tears.

Nathan gets vulnerable about the years struggling to understand their son’s unique neurology, as well as advocating for him in a system that they felt wasn’t well set up to support his needs.

“The more we tried traditional parenting techniques, the worse things got. Like, it really ramped up," he says. "It wasn't until we got to a certain point of basically breaking and letting go of a lot of the things that we thought we should be doing - because we'd been told we should..."

"...Throwing them out the window and having to reinvent how we parent, that's [when] everything changed."

Nathan shares openly about the emotional toll their journey has taken on the King family unit, but also speaks beautifully about the incredible depth of strength he has witnessed in Rachel and the love and resilience in their marriage that has grown out of their struggles.

He also shares a few laughs with Jenny and Dayna about the lighter moments of parenting, like when his daughter gave him a back-handed compliment about his new music.

“I think the highest accolade we got was my daughter, who's 16 now. She heard one of the new songs when it came into its finished form, and she said: 'Is that you, Dad?' And I was like, 'Yeah'. And she's like, 'No, that sounds like a proper song'. I took that as a great compliment. I made it to a 'proper song'.”

He delves into some of the magical "simple" moments of parenting too, like going 'out' for a family meal.

“We risked going out to a burger joint and grabbing a burger, all five of us, and we all sat around this table and ate burgers and everyone got on, and it was so awesome. And Rachel and I just kind of looked at each other going, ‘This is so cool’....it was just like a real reward for all the mahi, I suppose,” Nathan laughs.