Managing Big Transitions and Changes
Length: ~30 minutes
Presenters (for this session):
- Maggie Walsh – VP of Education, Cadence Education
- Shelley King – Senior Director of Classroom Experience, Cadence Education
Welcome & Introduction
We’re thrilled to have you here for the kickoff session in our series of parenting webinars. With more than 30 years in business, Cadence Education has established itself as one of the premier early childhood educators in the United States. We’re proud to serve over 30,000 families across the country, operating more than 300 private preschools and elementary schools that prepare students to thrive in their school age years and beyond.
At Cadence Education, our promise is to provide parents with peace of mind by giving children an exceptional education every fun-filled day in a place as nurturing as home. We’re committed to fostering strong relationships with their families and providing meaningful communication to support your child’s development. That’s why we’re excited to offer this new family resource, the Cadence Parent Partnership Program.
Our webinars are designed to help you navigate common parenting challenges while supporting your child’s growth and development. We’re so pleased that you’ve chosen to spend this time with us today as we discuss a topic that many parents face. Starting school, increasing your child’s confidence and comfort.
Starting school and managing life changes is something that all young children will experience. Whether you’re a new parent or a seasoned one, understanding barriers to developing confidence for managing change and having some tips to rely on can make this experience more manageable and positive for you and your child. We’re so glad you’re here with us and we’re looking forward to sharing insights and strategies during this session.
Speaker Introductions
I’m Maggie Walsh, the VP of education at Cadence Education and I bring over 25 years of experience as a classroom teacher and provider of teacher and leader professional development. With me today is my colleague Shelley King, who’s our senior director of classroom experience. Shelley has over 35 years running schools supporting educators, directors, and families in their efforts to provide excellent care for children.
Thank you, Maggie. And thank you to all of us who have joined us. We know how busy you are and so we’re just so honored and feel grateful that you’re here today investing to spend the next few minutes with us as we share some best practices that will help you support your child as they experience big milestones like going to school or maybe a new classroom.
Although much of our conversation today will be more directed towards starting a new school or starting in a new classroom, we do believe that these approaches and practices can give you some tools to support your child and building their confidence as they go through milestones. So whether it’s a new school, a new classroom, maybe it’s getting a new room or a big boy bed, a new home, or maybe even a new sibling, now that I have your attention, let’s talk about our goals today, which are to help you figuratively pack your child’s backpack with some practical strategies that can help them prepare for a new school, a new classroom, or a new milestone.
Webinar Goals & What to Expect
To do that, we’ll talk a little bit to help us understand what to expect during the transition periods and during these milestones. And lastly, we’re going to discover discover and discuss some ways to help support the social and emotional well-being really both for you and your child as your family goes through these transitions and changes.
We’re all pretty familiar with this phrase, the only thing that is constant is change. And we understand that everyone goes through change and everyone experiences changes throughout their life. So we think this quote is quite fitting.
Although each of us can approach change differently. Some of us get excited about change and see it as an adventure or something new. And others have a lot of question maybe even a little bit of anticipation and a little bit of fear. And that’s no different for our children.
But what we do know is that change is a way for us to go through experiences and grow. The tools that we’re going to talk about today help you help your child not just survive change, but to thrive through it and build confidence, kindness, and last but not least, a growth mindset that really stays with them in the future as they face new milestones when they get older.
Understanding How Children Process Change
Statistics tell us that the average human may meet up to 10,000 new people in a lifetime. That sounds like a lot of people. And to some of us, that’s exciting and builds new adventure and gets us excited and motivated. To others, that can be intimidating and just a little bit not or outside their interest.
These same studies show us that the average human may experience one major milestone or life change each year of their life. And so although those changes may be very different and each of us may experience them in in a different way, again what we know that is that change will come, we’ll learn through change and that it really is our approach to the change that makes all the difference.
So, we hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as we talk a little bit about helping our child prepare for milestones and changes.
How Young Children Build Confidence & Emotional Skills
Being confident and kind to help prepare children to manage change to manage changes, it first helps to understand how infants and young children are wired to manage the world around them.
A child’s brain and body are uniquely designed to help them process changes and various life experiences. For example, an infant is born with approximately 100 billion neurons at the time of of birth and they will use these throughout their lifetime. These neurons will be used to make the connections needed as their brain develops.
Young children learn emotional responses from the world around them, from children and adult models like us. Infants are initially born with just six key emotions related mostly to their senses. But as they grow, these develop into children develop additional emotions and learn more.
The way that we manage responses and reactions are a model for infants and children. They will develop new emotions and learn to recognize, label, and manage them. The way that we help prepare them and help them with their emotions and their responses today plays a big role in their resilience and adaptability for the future. Two of the most important are confidence and kindness.
Common Barriers to Confidence in Children
Thank you, Maggie. So, as we think about helping our child build that confidence, kindness, and growth mindset we mentioned, we might want to start with what are some of the barriers that our child may have. Um, as we think about helping them increase that, we need to think about getting over those barriers or helping our children build bridges over those barriers.
Negative self-talk
Um this might be an example that your child is not building those coping skills that they need and so that negative self talk can come out. Watch closely and listen to your child for cues that they might be too hard on themselves or giving up too early and invite them to join you in some practice that is about changing that negative selft talk for the positive. Um, some examples of that is to recognize that we’re feeling a little bit negative or that we’ve said something negative and change it out for something positive. It could be affirmations. It could be a family cheer or something positive you do each day that they can lean on to remind them or just repeating back to them positive self-t talk as a reverse of their negative self-t talk.
Over-protection vs. too much independence
One that we’ll all balance as a parent at some point in time is that knowing how to step in or balance the over protection versus too much independence. But what we also know is that children grow through their experiences. So we have to give them the space and give them opportunity to fail in supportive environments so they can build that confidence to get to that next level. And this could be just giving them simple tasks or challenges coming through play activities at home or maybe even chores and opportunities as they grow.
Giving them initially simple tasks or challenges or simple play challenges with basic steps as they’re younger and then increasing those as they get older can help them build that confidence. Make sure they’re age appropriate and then give them some praise and reward. And if they fail, talk about it. Walk through it and let them try again. Not giving up.
Not understanding expectations
Another one that we all struggle with is just not understanding expectations. All of us have confidence and thrive more when we know what to expect. And children are not any different. Have conversations with your child about what to expect.
And this can look like creating some talk about the routines, the change that’s coming, maybe creating some whatif discussion about what’s to come and talking about the things we know will happen and then what we might do if we come up with the unexpected.
Building Confidence Skills (Tools & Strategies)
What you can also do is encourage your child to face something that they’re concerned about, a change, a milestone by asking a lot of questions and with curiosity that comes from a positive space.
Once we’ve helped them identify their emotions that they’re having towards a change or towards a situation, we can start to think about building through that foundational tool the confidence and coping skills that will help them overcome them. We never want to stifle them. We want them to be able to recognize them and work through them.
Often times we do this in classrooms, in schools through transition activities. Some children love transition and enjoy new experiences every part of the day. But some children need some extra time. So we’ll give them visual schedules or warnings or even involve them in some of the practices of the transition.
Home → School Confidence Routines
Okay. So finishing that foundation and bridge ends up at school. Starting at home and ending at school. Let’s repeat those great practices and talk a little bit more about them.
Create a goodbye routine
First creating a goodbye routine. You want to be consistent. Allow your child to be a part of the decision making. Maybe it’s that they want to decide if they’re going to pack or hang up their backpack when they get there and their jacket or are they going to go find that familiar toy and friend while you ha um hang up the backpack.
Use some consistent phrases and practices when you give a hug. Remind them that you’ll be back after nap time or snack time. Remind them what you’re going to do. And one thing you want to avoid is sneaking out. Be consistent about that goodbye routine. And then don’t sneak out, but leave with confidence.
Supporting Yourself As a Parent
So, a couple minutes ago, we mentioned how important you are as a role model for your child. And we know that a full bucket is just so much more effective than an empty one.
It’s important to begin by reminding yourself that when your child starts school or experiences some type of uh important life change, there will likely be some challenges. Tears may be normal in the first few days or even weeks. You may also see some sleep or potty training or even behavior regression at home or at school temporarily.
Try not to be too hard on yourself or your child.
Books, Stories & Resources
We mentioned books and stories and these are just a few examples that you can check out or add to your family library or you might see on a shelf at the school and can borrow.
- Coffee Bean for kids
- It’s All Right
- The Little Black Cloud
- Kindness Is My Superpower
Key Takeaways
I want to briefly recap just a few of the takeaways that we’ve shared so far in today’s webinar. We hope that you’re already thinking about which of these strategies you can use to begin to help your child build their confidence and kindness as they’re thinking about the transition um into school.
- First, make sure to support your child by working on balancing the tendency to be overprotective and the need to provide opportunity for growth and experiencing change.
- Make sure to help establish clear understanding of expectations for change and monitor your child, especially if they have a tendency to do too much negative self talk. Do what Shelley said before, which is reinforce that by providing a lot of positive self-t talk and narration.
- Developing active listening skills and encouraging regular communication really helps children to build out their expectations and express their emotions.
- Routines. Make sure to establish some if you haven’t already yet. And even if you have, make sure you keep practicing them because it takes time for everybody to feel comfortable with change.
- And don’t forget yourself and your own journey through all of this big change. Keep in mind that we’ll be sharing a follow-up handout with some ideas that we’ve shared and the resources that we’ve noted uh along with a recording of the webinar today in a follow-up email that we’ll be sending out to you next week.
We really encourage collaboration between parents and educators at our schools in order to create supportive environments for children. If you’ve been listening to what we’ve been suggesting and you just feel like you’ve tried these strategies and they’re not working for you or your child, please reach out to your school director or your child’s teacher in order to create a special plan that meets your child’s needs. Our school directors have supported so many families over the years and they’re always hungry to provide additional support and resources to you. Just reach out.
Q&A Session
We wanted to spend a few minutes going through some questions that were submitted uh via Q for our Q&A. First, we just want to acknowledge that there were so many hundreds of questions actually that were submitted on a range of topics related to the topic of change and transition. Unfortunately, far more than we have time to answer in today’s webinar. However, we are going to be putting together an FAQ in which we will answer all the questions related to today’s topic and we’ll be sending that out to you along with the other resources I already mentioned.
For now, we’ve selected a few that represent some of the most common questions submitted by our families to today’s session.
“Is there a time that is too late to start school or childcare that makes the transition harder? Is it better to start as young as possible?”
What I’d say is um so great that you’re thinking about this and the thing I’d have you keep in mind is that children’s brains are at their most plastic when they’re young. So by the time they’re already 5 years old, their brain has already grown to 90% of its adult size. This just means the younger a child is when exposed to new routines and changes, the easier and faster they will learn to adjust. Starting school or care at a younger age is usually a good idea.
That said, every family knows their child best and each family’s circumstances are unique.
“How can parents help transition from one room to a new room or teacher?”
Yeah, and we mentioned um we recognize that transitions are big for all of us. Some of our schools will have transition activities that you can participate in. They will send letters from the classroom that your child is moving to or opportunities for you to visit a new school or a new classroom through open houses, curriculum activities, and step up days. Take advantage of all of these.
But also, if you want to take it another step further, take a minute before you pick up your child one day and ask to pop in and visit the teacher or the educator in the classroom your child’s going to be moving into or going to. Let them know that you are wanting to be proactive and help your child prepare.
Have some conversations about what to expect, what’s different about that classroom. And then set up a plan where you and your child may visit at different times as you pick up and drop off for the next few weeks or few days before the transition happens.
When you’re there, building the relationship with that teacher, the familiarity with the teacher’s face and and their name is going to help your child. also seeing some other friends, but also the familiarity with the space. Being able to understand what your child is excited about in terms of what that classroom has and pointing out that as you’re driving home and as you prepare to visit the next day are ways that you can build the confidence.
Another way is to find out what’s different and exciting about that classroom because maybe it’s a classroom that goes to a bigger playground or they go to a gross motor space sometimes during the day. really take advantage of those things that are new and interesting that your child will want to do and make that important. But also don’t avoid finding out what might be different that could be challenging for your child and talk about it and prepare them for that.
Those are some great ways to be just a bit more proactive in preparing yourself and preparing your child with the teacher helping you.
“How can we manage how can we help our child manage the transition to a new school when they start kindergarten? How can we support their friendships and confidence?”
Another great question. Um, first, what I’d say is if your school will allow it, schedule a school visit to see the classroom, the school, and meet the teacher. see if your school will provide you with some contact information for new classmates so that you can reach out to a few families who you might notice live close by you so that you could set up some playdates at a nearby park or even maybe the school’s play lot.
One of the best things that you can do while your child is still with us at Cadence is to take advantage of Cadence’s K club or kindergarten club. K club or kindergarten club begins in January each year for pre-k students who are heading to kindergarten in the fall. Children who come to K-Club are going to learn about all kinds of work and experiences that they will have when they go to kindergarten. It’s a really special time of the week when they participate in K-Club. It’s lots of fun and it gives the children some more exposure to some more sophisticated academics and skills while still doing so in a setting that they know and feel comfortable in.
Closing & Next Steps
I just wanted to note that we’re going to be hosting a series of webinars on a monthly basis through April this year. Next month we have a session um that’s called Tiny Humans Big Feelings, making sense of early emotions. And it’s going to give you some helpful tips on uh how to manage big emotions, temper tantrums, and emotional meltdowns.
We are also going to be hosting sessions in the coming months on the topics of managing biting and hitting, fostering independence through building routines, and toilet training, just to name a few.
We hope that you might take a couple of minutes to provide us with feedback. There’s a QR code that you can see on the screen here and we’ll also put a link to the feedback survey in the email that we’ll be sending out early next week. We always want to aim we we always aim to meet your needs and we want to grow and improve. So any feedback that you provide us is meaningful.
We hope that you join us again next month when we’ll share those strategies on managing meltdowns, behaviors, and big emotions.
Thank you all so much for joining us today. We appreciate your time.