Transitional anxiety in a child: what can help them? 

Transitional anxiety is having feelings of stress around any big change a child has to undergo, whether of place or circumstances.

Note: This is about transitional anxiety in the traditional, psychological sense. If you're looking for help with a child who is anxious about wishing to transition or unsure of their feelings, please look at the sexual identity page or the gender identity page.

During transitional moments, most of us have ways of coping. We’ve learnt from experience what we can expect when things change: turmoil, regret, excitement, gradually getting used to new ways and environments etc. 

So we are more ready for transitions when they happen.

For instance, we know what an office is like, and how office politics work, so we can move to a new job with less fear and anxiety. We understand the basics so only the detail has to be faced anew.

It's different for children

transitional anxiety 2

We need to remember two things when faced with their transitional anxiety:

  • Children have far less experience of life – so there’s much less to build their expectations on when a transition is about to happen
  • Children have far less power in general than we adults have

It’s obvious from this that when they have to make a change from something familiar to something new, their thinking and feelings can be seriously challenged.

They sometimes can’t imagine anything being better than what they already have – or being able to enjoy it, or even finding it manageable. 

And – crucially – they usually didn’t choose to make the change. They may feel it’s being imposed on them (and it often is: school, house moves, outings etc!).

But the good news is that after a few “transitional changes” in their life, children start to learn that all will be okay – especially if they’re allowed to:

  • be in on the planning, 
  • talk about their feelings, and
  • grieve for what they’re leaving behind – loss is a large part of any transition.

In general, your child will quickly adapt to a new situation, become familiar with it, start to enjoy it and then find it normal. 

This sequence becomes their life experience and they know they’ll cope reasonably well. Even if they protest and make the usual fuss to start with!

So when is transitional anxiety a problem?

The sequence of getting used to transitions is harder for some children to move through, and they react badly. This means anxiety around transitions becomes more difficult and more ingrained.

Worse still, when several of these changes happen at once, or in quick succession, any child can become extremely anxious – in spite of the fact that in their routine day-to-day life they’re not particularly anxious. 

Children who find changes harder are often sensitive to transitions  for a variety of reasons. These can include:

  • being less self-confident, 
  • having fewer self-calming skills 
  • perhaps being oversensitive to stimulus of any kind – in which case the whole idea of a change, and everything that is involved in it,  can be overwhelming
  • having specific triggers related to previous  experiences.

Some ways their transitional anxiety might show are:

  • Refusing to go/move/pack up/get ready etc
  • Playing up – grabbing games to play, turning the television on, disappearing into the garden, pretending not to hear you
  • Fidgeting nervously, pulling at clothing, chewing finger nails
  • Getting aggressive, punching an adult, shouting, crying
  • Emotional outbursts – even a full-blown meltdown. 

All this is behavioural change. And all behaviour is a communication. 

When you notice ongoing changes in behaviour at the time when a transitional event is due to happen in their lives, you can try picking up on the behaviour and “reading” it. 

When you've done that and understood it for what it is, you need to save your thoughts for later. You need to wait to deal with it till you can find a suitable moment to start talking with your child about their anxiety.

Suitable, here, usually means, calm and not "in the moment", which I'll explain below.

There are ways of coping and even improving things gradually 

These very difficult emotional outbursts, or obstinacy, or distress in your child make the transition hard for the whole family. But there are ways of easing the situation. 

I’ll offer some examples here but let you adapt them thoughtfully – because you’ll need to consider the age of your child and what's an appropriate way of using them. 

Plus make sure you find a calm moment when change isn’t being fought against.

You can't reason or chat when they’re fighting emotionally because their brain will have no time to even hear you. Their hormonal levels of cortisol are high and that cuts off the thinking brain – as if readying them to fight for their lives or to flee.

This dates back to ancient times when we'd be fleeing dangerous animals, and nothing else was more important than being bodily psyched-up to escape.

A good, calm time to start dealing with the transitional anxiety, therefore, would be when you’re reading together or playing or drawing.

  • If your child is old enough to discuss it, hear them out. Listen very carefully to what they say about the problem. 
  • The immediate response might be “because I don’t want to”. But that’s just the end result. So continuing asking.
  • Maybe avoid asking, “Why?” This rarely gets back anything useful with a child (usually “Just because” or “I don’t know”). So a better approach might be to ask something along the lines of, “What do you think will happen?” or “What do you feel might go wrong?” or "What's the real scary thing about this?"
  • You could then draw with your child. Maybe suggest inventing another child and then you both pretend this child doesn’t want to do/go/attend (whatever is the problem). Let your child draw this new child (deciding on clothing and gear in a fun way) and together start labelling the problems around the picture. 
  • Include things your child suggests might go wrong or happen – even if you don’t agree. Make it playful and fun. 
  • You can suggest some things too. Ask the child if your idea is a good suggestion to add to the picture (after all, you can imagine what’s bothering your child, like missing being with the family or not going shopping with a parent and little brother or sister, or having to face a new class teacher).
  • Discuss what the imagined child might do or think to start sorting things out. This is a trick therapists use. They will not feel threatened when it's not about themselves. And when they’re not feeling threatened, their brains are freed up to think of solutions.
  • You could take it further and brainstorm with them which one of several ideas might work for the imagined child. Write it down on the picture, like a plan of action. Or perhaps – if you think it better – leave it to simmer in their mind. They’ll inevitably start to wonder if it might help them, too. Once an idea is planted… you can’t “un-plant” it.
child's transitional anxiety drawing

Good ways of preparing an anxious child for transitional change

There are lots of transitions a child will face. These include: 

  • starting or changing school, 
  • moving house, 
  • a divorce or separation, 
  • sharing in a new mixed family, 
  • someone they know being ill enough that they're not expected to survive. 

Even small things like having to change activity, coming home from a friend’s house or stopping bedtime reading can cause distress and reaction in children who are sensitive to change.

Not because they’re playing up but because their experience has not yet shown them that change can be managed and even become familiar and be enjoyed.

Preparing for expected transitional moments

Obviously, no one can prepare for a sudden, unexpected event, but when you know that your child struggles, these tips may help you keep things calm when a change must happen.

  • Talk about it well in advance – if you get them used to the idea, and what may happen, you are giving them that prior knowledge that adults have anyway from experience
  • Acknowledge their feelings about it – take them seriously and talk about them. Assure them of your love, support and help
  • Draw some of the things that will happen – a visual record is really helpful to children who struggle to remember what's going to happen in the order it might happen
  • Allow them a transitional object – sometimes this is all that is needed if they just need a reminder to carry with them (this links to separation anxiety)
  • Try to share a bit of power with your child – is there something you can let them decide and get excited about and “own”? It lowers resistance quite well in the right situation 
  • Keep everything else as normal as possible – routine is incredibly important to children, and they thrive best if you always have a routine of some sort in your family.

A word about an impending death in the family

This is a special case of transitional anxiety because it is both a one-off (in terms of one person being about to die) and something that's expected and feared for a long time before the child has to come to terms with things having changed. 

Usually there will also be a very similar transitional anxiety in the other members of the family, both adults and children. This complicates the child's anxiety. They feel their own, and they feel the family's too.

So I've written more about this aspect of transition if you follow this link, because death is a serious cause of anxiety in a society that prefers to pretend it doesn't exist until it happens – and a society where children are not often overtly included in talking and planning.

QUICK CHECK: TRANSITIONS

  • Understand better what transitional anxiety is about in your child
  • Give your child space to express their feelings/fears
  • Acknowledge your child’s feelings
  • Give your child a sense of control over timings of transitions where possible
  • Help your child prepare for change with support and reassurance
  • Encourage positive self-talk in older children
  • Celebrate accomplishments!

I have a whole section on ways of engaging with your anxious child, coping with their worries and reducing their anxiety here.

If you believe that things have gone too far and you'd like your child to see a counsellor face to face, please go to my Help page for information about how to do that successfully and safely.

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