School transitions are a subject close to my heart right now as my eldest hurtles towards the end of Year 6 and makes the leap into the scary world of BIG SCHOOL. At the moment she is excited, which is great. But I have no doubt that there will be some anxious moments to deal with over the summer when the realisation kicks in that she is about to go from a big fish in a lovely, small, safe and nurturing pond to small fish in a very different and much bigger pond.

So as parents what can we do to help our kids to walk in on their first day feeling confident and prepared? Here’s a few ideas:

Support the Endings

One thing I have learned over my years of working with children is that endings can be a powerful learning and healing experience. Some children moving on to secondary school might never have really experienced a significant change or loss before. Other children might have experienced a series of painful and traumatic losses. For both sets of children really acknowledging endings is vital and can provide a learning experience. This will support them to be able to manage more painful endings in a healthy way in the future.

Children might want to rush ahead in the excitement of leavers assemblies, trips out and end of year parties. But supporting them to acknowledge that there may also be sadness and anxiety attached to the ending allows them to understand that it is absolutely normal to have mixed feelings about big changes. This sounds obvious to us but don’t assume it is obvious to an 11 year old (or a 9 year old if they are experiencing a first to middle school transition). Being able to tolerate mixed feelings is all part of their emotional development.

This doesn’t mean that you need to feel that you have to stifle their excitement. Just talking about your own memories of their time at the school and looking through old photos you will open up conversation. Encourage your child to write a card to their teacher or other significant adults in the school. This give them opportunity to think about the ending of the relationship. Another idea is to have a notebook in which their friends can write them messages to mark the end of school. Reading this will open up the space to reflect.

Be Ready to Listen

This sounds really obvious but there’s a catch. Our natural inclination as parents is often to jump in to fix a problem or a worry. Your child says that they feel anxious and you jump in to reassure them that they will be fine, that they have been on visits and that there will be lots of help and support in the first few weeks. You say all this with a big smile on your face because the last thing you want them to know is that you are worried too.

The problem is that by jumping in too quickly without connecting with the feeling you can leave your child with the idea that their feeling isn’t important. And you’ve also given them the solution rather than encouraging them to think for themselves. This means they have missed out on a chance to develop the confidence that they can find their own solutions.

So instead take it more slowly. Acknowledge and empathise with the feeling. Explore the source of the worry. Ask your child what they think they can do. If they are stuck then of course you can give them ideas but if we want to raise confident children we have to give them space to think of their own solutions.

Support their Independence:

On a similar note, one way in which world has changed significantly since most of us were children, is that children are now usually far less independent. The average age for being able to tie your own shoe laces continues to rise. This is hardly surprising given the amount of juggling most parents are doing to get out of the house in the morning. How often do we jump in to do things ourselves because we know we can do it quicker and we don’t have time to wait?

The knock-on effect of this is that our children may not feel that they can do things for themselves, which has an impact on their overall confidence. Responsibility and independence are important to the development of confidence. You can help by thinking of ways that you can develop responsibility and independence before September arrives.

How about taking responsibility for cooking a regular meal? Having set jobs in the home? Or maybe teaching a younger sibling a skill? (like maybe how to tie their shoelaces!?).

Work on Understanding and Managing Anxiety

Anxiety is a normal part of life however for some children it is overwhelming and debilitating. All children benefit from understanding more about anxiety so that they can normalise the feeling. The more children and young people are able to understand and work with their own anxious feelings the less out of control they feel when they happen.  There are lots of great resources out there which explain what anxiety is and why it exists:

Anxiety explained for teens: https://youtu.be/rpolpKTWrp4

Anxiety explained for kids: https://youtu.be/FfSbWc3O_5M

Here’s a great video from the NLP4kids YouTube channel with some creative ideas on managing anxious feelings: https://youtu.be/QUmF-4b-3TU

If you are worried that your child needs more help to learn to manage their anxiety then some sessions focused on their specific difficulty can be really beneficial. The secondary school transition is particularly difficult for child who experience high levels of anxiety. With school avoidance on the rise it is best to get support before the difficulty really takes hold.

Next Steps

If you are worried then give me a call or fill out the form below. If you are in the Newcastle area then I will be putting on some targeted sessions during the summer holidays (either in groups or 1-1). If you are not within the Newcastle area I am able to provide the same service via Zoom.