July 17, 2019 | UHCL Staff
Change is never easy, no matter how old you are. During the last days of the school year, many children are saying goodbye to beloved teachers, leaving their school, or even moving to an entirely new location. As your child starts back to a new school, University of Houston-Clear Lake’s Associate Professor of Special Education Elizabeth Beavers said that the key to a smooth transition is good communication.
She narrowed it down to a few critical steps that parents can take to make a stressful move a bit easier for their child:
Beavers said that when her own children experienced these transitions, they were primarily focused on the social dimension of how their lives would change. “Finding connections with their peers was their underlying focus,” she said. “Encourage their social effort as long as it’s grounded in their personal interests, values and preferences. Talk about being flexible and look for similarities, not differences. Sometimes the world seems particularly difficult and this is when you can show them that they’ve been through hard times before. The situation may be different, but the emotions are the same.”
In the end, she said, even though it’s hard for parents to watch their children struggle, they should walk beside their child through the transition. “Some parents might want to walk in front of them and pull them along, or walk behind them and push through the process,” she said. “Walk beside them, and encourage open communication at their level.”
