By Peckie Peters, Head Teacher
Change is inevitable. Knowing that, I eagerly jumped in as one of the new head teachers in Center PM, after being firmly rooted in West AM for the past 15 years. Helping young children grow in resilience and flexibility with regard to change is something I do every day as an early childhood teacher. Families move, new children come into the classroom (whether from the Twos class or from Germany) and we help them make new friends and see the possibilities of their new environment. We help them learn new words in a language different from their own, we help them make overtures to play, and we help them make connections with peers, teachers and the classroom pet. My own transition heightened my feelings for what children must feel, and this article is a reflection on that process.
Learning to cope with transitions is a demanding and important skill for young children to develop, as transitions happen hourly, daily, weekly and throughout our lives. Sometimes the transitions are minor, or perhaps even mundane, like when a child has to leave the park to go home for a nap, or when it’s time to stop playing to go inside for a snack. Other times, they are major: having a new baby sister or brother, moving to a new house or coming to a new school. We all learn to cope with changes by experiencing them and by developing strategies for anticipating and responding to what comes our way. The primary difference between adults and children is that adults tend to be the ones who get to make decisions about changes. As a result, they get to think about the implications involved and use their previous experiences to guide them through the emotions they encounter. Children, who lack this repertoire of experience, have to work through their emotions, relying on adults to help them understand their feelings and navigate the transitions.
For example, the first day of school is a big transition for all of us, and while it can be exciting, it can also be stressful. For those who are returning to something familiar, the anticipation can produce a variety of emotions from excitement to anxiety. For children who are coming for the first time, it can produce joy, but it can also elicit concern or sadness. Thinking about saying goodbye to parents, meeting new teachers and children, seeing old friends, and being in a school environment can lead to unfamiliar emotions. As the children arrive, teachers can see in their bodies and their faces this range of feelings from happiness to unease. I am struck by the thought that their experience is similar to mine, yet I recognize that they don’t have the same brain capacity for regulating their behavior or their emotions. How, then, can we as adults support this process?
Tovah Klein, a professor at Barnard College, describes how “...most of us prefer consistency, to have things stay the same. Comfort comes in knowing what to expect. Nowhere is this more apparent than with children before age 5.” Young children live in the moment and have to learn through experience how to predict what is coming next—and how to understand and cope with the changes that arise. How children manage transitions is also impacted by a number of factors including temperament, capacity for organization, developmental level and context. At this stage, children’s brains are still developing the capacity for self-regulation, which makes it challenging for them to manage emotions and have a well-defined sense of time. For children to have success with transitions, they need adults to help them switch their attention from something familiar and comfortable to focus on something different. With development and practice, their skill with transitions improves.
Children develop trust when adults are attentive and responsive to work that feels important to them.
At Bing, we recognize these challenges that children (and parents) face, so our philosophy and methodology for supporting children and families reflects this understanding. For example, each summer and fall, we meet with families who are new to the school for an extended intake conference, in which we talk about their child, their family and their histories. For returning families, we do the same, but it is more a “check-in” to see what might have changed since the last meeting. These conversations help teachers understand what is important to parents and support them more fully.
Because I was making a transition to a new classroom, I was more aware than usual of the transitions the children were experiencing: Some children were completely new to Bing. Others were transitioning from the smaller Twos program to the larger Center PM classroom. Others had spent the summer with their older siblings and were now at school by themselves for the first time. Many were returning to the classroom and missed their previous teachers and noticed the absence of friends who had gone off to other programs or kindergarten. Sometimes this is the most disconcerting: The environment is familiar, but it feels different.
Jessie was one of the children brand-new to Bing and having some difficulty separating from their parents at drop-off time. In Jessie’s case, teachers encouraged her mother to spend some time in the book corner, where Jessie could see her, while they engaged Jessie in other play activities. As Jessie played and her mother observed, both of them developed trust in the teachers, and Jessie was able to separate from her mother. For Jaime, a child who had been at school during the summer with his older sister, being in the classroom without her was a new experience. Spending the first 5 or 10 minutes sitting in a teacher’s lap seemed to help him.
Madina, who was returning to the class, had a hard time at the beginning of the year understanding where some friends and teachers from last year had gone. Talking about the changes helped, her mom said, especially when current teachers talked about the previous teachers as their friends and shared stories about what they were doing now. In all of these examples of adapting to change, the process focused on honoring each child and each family’s needs and giving the process time to unfold.
Sometimes parents are more troubled by an upcoming transition than the children are. When Liam’s parents learned that several teachers would be leaving from Center PM, they tried to prepare Liam by talking with him about each of the teachers and where they would be going. Liam’s mother was worried that he would miss the relationships he had formed with previous teachers, but as they talked, she realized that once he understood where they had gone, he was able to move on. She was surprised that he did not seem to share her sadness about losing familiar teachers. She also recognized that the transition represented a loss for her—of her relationships with the former teachers—and raised a fear that some of the expectations she had developed about Bing would no longer be true.
As the year progressed, children, parents, families and teachers built a new community. Looking back on the process gives us insight into the multiple aspects of transitions and how challenging they can be. Through watching and supporting the children and families of Center PM, I learned that shifting from something familiar to something new can cause unease, but that coping with these changes helps develop flexibility and resilience. Adults can support children’s ability to face change independently by helping them anticipate, prepare for, and successfully navigate transitions. As adults, we recognize that the process can be stressful, and we can rely on those same strategies to smooth the way. Patience and understanding will help us all benefit from the positive outcomes that change can bring.