Supporting your child with transition

How school helps your child prepare for the next school year

We have an extensive and well tried and tested transition programme, planned to ensure that the children feel confident and secure about the move to their new class/school next year.

This includes:

• PSHE lessons/circle times in classes focusing on change, how this might make us feel and how to manage those feelings.
• Activities to express and deal with worries about change/uncertainty.
• Transition Days such as the Class Swap where children visit their new class/school and get to know the staff in their new class.
• Extra visits/activities are arranged for any child who may find change particularly challenging.

How parents can prepare their child for moving on?

• Start talking to your child about the fact that they will be moving to a new class/school now if you haven’t already.
• Keep the conversation casual and focus on the positives.
• Talk about change as a positive, exciting opportunity.
• Avoid expressing your own doubts, negative thoughts or anxieties to your child.
• Remember that if we try to provide too much certainty and comfort, we are getting in the way of children being able to develop their own problem-solving skills. Overprotecting children from difficult or uncomfortable situations only fuels their anxiety.
• If children tell you they are anxious/worried, normalise their feelings. Talk about how you sometimes feel this way too and that it's ok to feel this way. Help your child to develop resilience by talking through strategies to manage their worries. Help them to challenge negative thinking. (For example, you might remind them of how they made new friends last year or talk through how to ask someone to play etc).
• Remind them that feelings are like clouds. They come and go. We can't stop them coming but we can choose how we look at them.
• Give your child opportunities to share their feelings about their new class by drawing pictures or writing messages to a family member or to a favourite toy.
• Prepare your child (and yourself) for the routines for getting to school and back home: tell them what the plan is clearly, including childcare arrangements.

If you or your child are worried about transition you might find the below booklets, which can be found online, useful along with the below link:

• The Child's Experience of Primary School
• Positive Parenting - Encouraging Better Behaviour

https://psychcentral.com/lib/10-tips-for-raising-resilient-kids/