Transitions

I’ve often heard how parents are shocked, amused, or horrified when they get a glimpse of themselves in their child’s behavior. It goes the other way too..as adults, children sometimes, despite their best efforts, find themselves acting just like their parents. My husband and I like to joke that when my son is being difficult, it’s because of something he inherited from the other parent. But, truthfully, I see both of us in our kids and it’s not always pretty.

His teachers have told me that my son might have difficulty with transitions. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve known since he was two, that big changes were tough on his sensitive nature…just like me! Apparently, this extends to smaller day to day transitions. I wonder if I could learn to help both of us with transitions, big and small.

Big changes have always scared me more than they’ve excited me. I definitely get excited, but usually fear and anxiety overwhelm the positive feelings. I wonder if I work on building the transition muscles on a smaller, daily scale, I might be more resilient when it comes to larger life events. Maybe I could even teach my son to do the same! Novel no, but to me it’s a revelation.

For example, transitioning from bed to wakefulness and the opposite, from wakefulness to bed, takes me longer than most people. I just have to accept that I’m not someone who konks out as soon as my head hits the pillow. I also need some “peaceful” time between waking and starting the day/interacting with others. This is hard to do with three small kids, but I think if I want to show up my best, I need to prioritize these things.

I will have to experiment and see how it goes..unfortunately, there are many instances in life where transitions have to happen hard and fast and there’s little control you have (I’m thinking of the bell ringing in high school and having two minutes to walk across a huge building to your next class-whew!) But, we can give ourselves grace at least, and acknowledge that if we are feeling overwhelmed it’s because this particular need isn’t being met. The next chance we get, we can give ourselves extra time to prepare for what life has in store.