Transitions are hard for most of us.  After all, transition is just another word for change.  Some of us take changes in stride and barely notice the discomfort.  Others of us have a great deal of difficulty when it comes to transitions.  For some children change can be especially stressful – even when we’re talking about day-to-day or hour-to-hour transitions.

  Children have very little control over their day-to-day lives (even though it feels to us as if they have taken over in almost every arena of our lives!).  Control can be thought of in a negative way when we use terms such as power struggle, but in this context it helps me to understand a child’s needs if we look at it as a way to feel secure.  Children need to feel safe and secure – some more often than others, some in specific situations, especially, and some less often than others.  The hard part is figuring out your child’s security needs because children express their needs in a kind of code language that can be very deceiving.

  We learned about one of our child’s security needs the long and hard way because his “code language” was distracting us from the problem.  This child has a strong personality and likes to be in charge.  He is not afraid to speak in front of groups of kids or adults and appears confident in most situations.  His problems have included tantrum throwing when the slightest thing didn’t seem to go his way.  His emotions seem highly volatile in both negative and positive directions.

  Any self-respecting counselor type like myself might look at this scenario and say, “This child has ‘power issues’ and needs more limits.  So we admit, that’s the way we saw it and I’m sure there is still some truth in that theory.  However, when we took a closer look, what looked like a child who needed more discipline turned out to be a child who needed to feel a greater sense of security in his surroundings.

  When we looked at our son’s most difficult times during the day, they began to have a theme – transitions.  He had a hard time going from sleep to awake, from PJ’s to clothes, from home to school, from fee play to circle time, circle time to snack, etc., etc.  This child needed to be able to predict the changes in his environment and to deal with the uncomfortable feeling of the change itself.

  When I try to imagine the way a child feels when he can’t predict what’s happening next, I think about walking around with a blindfold on and having no skills to sense the ups, downs, turns and obstacles around him or her.  To empathize with the heightened sense of insecurity a child can feel during a transition I imagine how I would feel walking on a tight rope – regular walking just turned into a very uncomfortable ordeal!

  Understanding our child’s insecurity was certainly half the battle but helping him cope is our ongoing challenge.  Not only is every child unique -- so is every parent when it comes to lifestyles and personality types.  Trying to keep a very organized, highly predictable existence is not always possible or even desirable.  Somehow, as with most things in life, we realized we needed to find a way of compromising between our styles and our other children’s, and his needs.  Here are some of the things we have found very helpful.

  Try to remember to keep telling the child throughout the day what is happening next.

  Give him something to hold in his hands during a transition time.

  Label his feelings by saying things such as “It is so upsetting to have to stop what you are doing and come to the dinner table.”  (Don’t worry, I can never think of something this good in real life, either, but you get the idea!)

  Put one of those children’s monthly calendars up in the kitchen and let him put stickers on special days in the week so he can see what is coming up.

  Give three warnings at time intervals before a transition occurs.  For a younger child, it’s best to stick with shorter time intervals such as 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 1 minute, and then time to go.  For an older child, it can be 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 5 minutes, then time to go.

  Rehearse the upcoming event with your child.  “Tell me what is going to happen when this movie is over, Susie.  That’s right, we are going to brush our teeth and read our bedtime story.”

Physically touch him during a transition time.

Remind him how good he feels when he makes a transition successfully.

  Give him something to look forward to in the event coming up like, “I know bedtime is hard for you, but just think about the great time you’ll have swinging on the stars in your dreams!”

  My hope is that you and your child can find something, even if it’s just one bit of information, which will help bring a greater sense of warmth, love and security for your family.