Helping children deal with change

“Because when we can look at it through the lens of a child, we are more likely to sit in a place of empathy and compassion with them as opposed to just wanting to fix it or control it or justify why it’s okay. Change can feel big for everyone, whether you’re an adult or you’re a child, and it’s okay for it to feel wobbly.”

Lael Stone @laelstone

Why can change be so unsettling for our toddlers? I mean, change up the snack crackers and you may have a major crisis on your hands. On this episode of My New Life, Jessical Rolph hosts Lael Stone, author of “Raising Resilient and Compassionate Children”. Never is our resilience put to the test more so than in the face of change.

If you and your family are changing things up — be it a new home, new caregiver, or a new school, Lael will help you navigate what can be tricky terrain with your child. In addition to her work as a parent educator, she is a mother of three. You can find Lael @laelstone.

Transcript:

Considerations with change

Jessica: What we should consider when it comes to children and change?

Lael: So I think the first thing always when I talk to adults is to really hold a container of compassion and understanding that change can feel hard for some children.

And so when we look at how we can make change a little bit easier for kids, for me, I’m always big on information as the first piece. Even if you have a six-month-old or you have a four-year-old or an eight-year-old, we need to tell children and give them information about what’s happening. I have a school that we created that we opened three years ago that’s based all around emotional intelligence. And one of the key factors of what we do at our school is about information, which means that whenever we are doing something different, like if we are going on an excursion somewhere or somebody new is coming into the school to teach something or we have to do something that’s different to our normal rhythms and routines, we create social stories. So we create pictures and talk through what’s going to happen and you know who’s going to be there and how it’s going to look. So for those children that really need information, that need is met for them.

Some children don’t as much and they’re pretty cruisy and they can roll with it, but for a lot of children, that information and understanding what’s happening allows their nervous system to settle because they’re like, okay, I understand what’s going to happen now and that feels okay for me. And some children are like this, whether it’s you get them dressed in the morning when they’re really little, they need information to know, I’m going to take your jumper off now or we’re going to put your socks on. And that again helps them feel seen and understand what’s going on. For other children, it’s not such a big thing. So I think it really is important to look at the child in front of you and what their needs are and also who they are in their disposition. For highly sensitive children, particularly, change and transitions can feel really hard.

Jessica: Tell me what is happening with a child during change? How can we start with just building some empathy.

Lael: Well, I think the first thing is, I often say to any adult who works with children, can we firstly put ourselves in the position of that child as that two-year-old or that four-year-old, and remember how big change can feel? Because when we can look at it through the lens of a child, we are more likely to sit in a place of empathy and compassion with them as opposed to just wanting to fix it or control it or justify why it’s okay. So I think it’s a great thing to just remember that change can feel big for everyone, whether you’re an adult or you’re a child, and it’s okay for it to feel wobbly, that’s the other thing. It’s okay to feel really unsure around change. We all can feel like that at times. So when we can, firstly as the adult, be compassionate and empathetic, then often our responses will be a lot softer and will be a lot more holding for the child, which again is then going to help them process whatever’s going on.

Preparing for transitions

Jessica: So I think so many of us parents are feeling empathetic towards our child. We actually kind of feel bad that they have to go through a move or a change of a caregiver or we’re excited for school but wondering how to do it. This is a question where a parent is going through lots of different changes, so let’s give this a listen and would love to get your advice.

Caller 1: Hi Lovevery, I love your toys and your whole mission. I am planning on moving soon from Chicago to Atlanta and I have an almost two-year-old and he is very aware and very verbal and he’s had the same nanny since he was five months old a few days a week, and then I’m with him the other days. And as we move, he’ll be spending more time with aunts and uncles and then eventually transitioning into daycare or preschool for the first time. So I’m just wondering how to start preparing him for that transition. He definitely is sensitive when I leave him with someone he is not familiar with or in an unfamiliar environment. He just cries and really, really doesn’t want me to leave. So I’m just want to start early with preparing him for the transition. Thanks.

Jessica: It’s so hard because with moving, so many changes are stacked together. So what advice do you have for this parent? How soon do we talk about it? How do we talk about it? How can we help? 

Lael: So I think it is great to talk about it. This is what we’re going to be doing soon. We’re going to be moving to a different house and we are going to have someone else look after us now, and we talk about it. And I think the way we talk about it is really important. So if energetically, we can speak about it with, it’s going to be changed. And I know it might feel tricky, but I’m going to be with you and we’re going to be okay, our children are always reading our energy, so they’re always picking up on how we feel. So a really important thing when we are starting to talk about it, if we are feeling panicked or we are feeling really unsure about it, that is often the energy our children pick up on. So one of the things I often say to adults is, if you have lots of feelings around it, first, go and speak to someone, go and speak to a friend or a listening partner or someone where you get to kind of share what all your worries are so you can come back and be as anchored and as centered as possible for your child, because children are always feeling us. And it might not often be about what we say, but they’re always tuning into our bodies and feeling that energy. So my first thing would be get clear with yourself in how you talk about it.

The other thing I think that’s really important is to use play as a way to help children process change. So play is children’s beautiful love language of processing life. And so you can start playing games, moving house. We start playing moving house: This is the house we live in and we’re going to pack all our bags and we’re going to move to this house and what’s going to happen when we’re in this house? And you could also do that around a caregiver.

We love being with Sally, and Sally has loved us for like a long time, but now Sally has to go somewhere else and we’re going to go to a new place and we’re going to play with this uncle and this auntie, and you can start playing it with dolls or Teddys or those kind of things so that we start opening up those conversations. So I absolutely love that children’s way of processing life is through play. And if we can be present enough as adults or create enough space, they will often play through what they need to in order to process what’s going on for them.

Introducing new caregivers

Jessica: I loved your advice to really start talking about it and that we’ll miss Sally, and that we’ve got a new caregiver. Let’s play one… Another customer’s question and see what you’re thinking about introducing a new caregiver. Is there anything we can do to help with that transition? 

Caller 2: We are getting an au pair in a few weeks and my three and a half year old tends to be shy around people, so we’re a little bit nervous about introducing the helper to him. Do you have any tips or advice? Thank you.

Jessica: So the transition of introducing a new caregiver or a new important person into life, how can we make that transition… Help make it go well? 

Lael: I think when we are introducing someone new, we want to do it gently and slowly, but we want to do it without pressure. So perhaps the first time we meet, it’s, we are all just sitting on the floor and playing together and we just play for half an hour or an hour, and, again, play is such a beautiful way to create these connections where we get to laugh and play and we don’t leave the child yet. We just, we stay there with them for half an hour or an hour and that’s our first introduction and then maybe we do it again, where we play a little bit more.

We want to give a child time and space to really energetically feel out this other person to know that it feels safe for them to be with them. Play and laughter is one of the best ways that we can actually do that. So if the new caregiver is able to be fun and playful and laugh, that is so enticing for children, that brings connection. Play is such a beautiful way to bring connection. And when we can foster that connection, then we can slowly work towards the child knowing, hey, this is a safe person for me to be with.

Jessica: And how far in advance do you start to tell your child, let’s just say it’s a two or three-year-old that there’s… We’re going to be having a new caregiver or we’re going to be moving or we’re going to school, you’re starting a new school. Do you do it two weeks in advance, a week in advance, the day before? 

Lael: Yeah, so I think, again, it depends on the child and it depends I think how much you are aware of how they process or how they move through things. So I usually think two to three weeks can be a really good thing. So you’ve got lots of time to play, you’ve got lots of time to listen to their feelings about it. You’ve got lots of time to maybe practice whatever it is that the change is going to do, whether if it’s starting school, let’s drive to the school, this is how we drive there, or let’s go and have just a play at the playground at the school. We do lots of things like that. We are definitely not doing it two months out because that can feel big and overwhelming. But I think when there’s a few weeks where we’ve got time to play and create space to connect in with it, then that is a really good thing.

Acknowledging children’s feelings

Jessica: So children often have some fears about… Some fear might show up, or some worry about a change, or sadness about somebody leaving, if it’s an important person in their life. How can we respond to those feelings without feeding that worry? How do we acknowledge their feelings but don’t amplify? 

Lael: Yeah. I think that the important thing within that is what I call just holding space for them to process how that feels for them. So as adults, and particularly when it’s our own children, when our child is upset, every single part of us wants to make that okay, and that’s because we love them and we care for them, and when we’re seeing our child struggle with something, we often want to jump in and go, “Oh, it’s okay, but this will be fine and this will happen,” and we move into justifications or we move into why it’s not going to be upsetting. But I think one of the most important things that we can do is actually take a deep breath and just say something like, “Oh, it feels really hard, doesn’t it, sweetheart? Well, tell me more. Oh, you’re really sad that that person is going to be leaving. I understand that.”

So when a child feels heard and when they know it’s safe for them to bring those feelings, they might have a really big upset. It might go for 20 minutes or so or even longer. But if they’re given the opportunity to feel it and express it, then usually they will move into a state of calm and they will have let it go, and then they actually often are a lot more willing to move on. It’s when we don’t allow those feelings out that they often stay stuck in the body, and then that’s where it becomes a tension point, and often that’s when we see the story keeps going round and round and the fear kind of gets stuck there.

So part of our job as adults is to create those really safe spaces for our children to express those big feelings, and then let them go.

Tips for starting a new school

Jessica: You have an early childhood education program and you’ve got so much experience. And so starting school, that’s that big change, and we haven’t totally dug into any specific tips related to starting school or starting a new day care program or starting pre-school. What advice do you have for parents who want to prepare their pre-schooler, let’s say, for their first day of school, or if they want to start same age band around a new daycare? 

Lael: I think it’s really important that we give children the opportunity to go and see where they’re going, to go and meet the people that are going to be there, to try and form some connection with some of the caregivers that are there. So it might be just visiting for 20 minutes or going and having a play in the playground, really making it familiar for the child. I think also playing kindies or schools or daycare at home, if we can. And often children will do this quite beautifully where they might end up being the teacher and you’re the person that has to go to daycare.

So you pretend to get your backpack on and get ready and you’re going now and they follow the play that they instruct around what happens and that’s often a brilliant way for children to process whatever is going on around that. And also, again, holding space for their feelings around that. They might be like, “I don’t want to go to kindy,” and you can be like, yeah, I hear you, it’s so scary, doesn’t it? And you can tell me more. And just listening again to whatever might be present for them around actually going and making that transition. So I think creating as much familiarity as possible, playing what it might look like, creating connections with the people they’re going to have there can be really, really powerful for when children are starting this next phase of their life.

Maintaining a routine

Jessica: How important is it to keep everything your child’s routine as unchanged as possible during a transition? Or walk me through what this looks like. How can you keep some things the same, for example, when you’re moving, or when you got starting school, how do you do that? 

Lael: I think that we can keep those connection points of something that’s familiar to a child, which is really, really important when we’re changing schools or moving house. If they normally go to swimming on Tuesdays, still go to swimming on Tuesdays. And it’s those kind of elements of, this is what we do at nighttime, we do the same kind of routine and rhythm at nighttime. Trying to keep as many of those things can be really powerful for child because it just creates that familiarity and that sense of safety, even though things are looking different. We try our best as adults to try and keep that rhythm as much as we can, but there are going to be times where it feels tricky or it’s wobbly because there is change going on and that feels hard for us as well. So I think we have to be really gentle with ourselves as parents if it doesn’t feel as clean as what we want it to. Changes are big for everybody. But yeah, I think it is really important to keep what we know to be solid if we can for a child, because that gives them that sense of security and safety, and also being flexible within it.

And I really do come back to this. I really trust that children know what they need to do to process life. Sometimes we just miss the cues. So sometimes when they come in and say, “I want to play these things,” and if you sit back and watch, you can actually see that what they’re doing is they’re going, “Oh, I’m trying to process what’s happening here in this new thing.” So if we can take a little bit of time to just be present and watch and sometimes joining with them, or not even, just watching and trusting what they’re doing, then I really do believe that kids know what they need to do to navigate these changes.

Jessica: Yeah. Is there a benefit of trying to give our children just some amount of control and power in these disruptive situations? What does that actually look like? 

Lael: Yeah, that’s a great suggestion. So I think for the children, when change happens, particularly when it’s something that they’re not instigating, they can feel very powerless. And so giving them choice and autonomy and something that we talk about, doing things like power reversal games can be brilliant in helping them process where they may feel powerless in their lives. So giving them the ability to choose, “What do you think we should have for dinner tonight?” or again, depending on the age of your child, or you can do things around, “Should we do this one or that one?” which I think is an important thing for children no matter what, to have choice in their life.

But I also think one of the best things we can do with play again is to do power reversal games, which is where the child gets to be faster or stronger or tell you what to do for a certain amount of time. Because children can often feel very powerless, so when we play power reversal games, they love it, and usually that’s where they laugh hysterically. And power reversal games can be things like, they might kinda hit you with a pillow, like you’re having a pillow fight and you fall backwards and then they laugh hysterically. That’s a power reversal game.

It might be when you’re pushing them on the swing and you kind of touch the front of their feet and you kind of jump backwards, and then they giggle. That’s a power reversal game. It might be for a four-year-old, they have a magic wand and you’re only allowed to move when they tell you you can move. And so they’re in control of what you’re doing, which again, they love. So those kind of things can be really amazing too, at helping them feel like they have some power when they often don’t feel that because change is happening.

Jessica: I love those tips. And it makes me think about how much my kids love to wrestle and then have me lose every time. It’s so sweet. It’s so fun. Any parting advice for our listeners who are going through changes in their lives? 

Lael: I think it’s so important as adults that we have the opportunity and space to talk about how big it feels for us because it’s so vital when we’re holding space for our children that we process how it feels. Because so often what we do is we can see in front of us, “Oh gosh, this is going to be big,” or “I can anticipate that this change is going to be hard.” And we carry that all ourselves and then we sometimes pass that onto our children even though we don’t want to. So I’m a big fan, as an adult, to go, hey, if you’re feeling wobbly about the change, speak to someone, just a friend or a relative or your partner. “Gosh, I feel scared about this happening. I’m worried about how our child’s going to deal with it.”

And when you can get it out and you have a safe place to take it and speak it, then it often allows you to come back to your child and be more centered and anchored, and that makes a massive difference in a child trusting, hey, these change and transition is going to be okay because I’m feeling that my parent is okay with it. So I think it’s important that we take care of our needs as adults as well so that we can be that beautiful, safe, gorgeous holding for that new transition that’s happening.

Jessica: That is so helpful to hear. Oxygen mask first, put your own on first before trying to put on the other. So thank you so much, Lael. This was wonderful having you here with us.

You can find Lael @laelstone. These are my takeaways from our conversation:

1. A great way to ease children into a big change (or even a smaller transition) is to create pictures and talk through what’s going to happen, who’s going to be there, and how it’s going to look. For those children that thrive on information, it eases some of the anxiety around uncertainty.
2. Make an effort to view change through the lens of your child. Even something like a visit to a new playground can feel scary. Meet their concerns with empathy and compassion rather than attempting to fix the situation, or justify why it’s no big deal.
3. Children process what’s going on around them through play. Help your child to explore changes by creating a similar scenario with their favorite toys. It’s a great time to ask questions like: How do you think Teddy is feeling about moving to a new home?
4. Change often makes children feel powerless. Try a power reversal game to restore some sense of power. This is a game where your child gets to be faster or stronger or know more than you do!

Learn more on our Lovevery blog.