The Reason Transitions Can Be Difficult
Transitions are the time between activities or events, including the time leaving one event and the time entering into another.
Difficulty with transitions can ruin an otherwise enjoyable family outing. Hard transitions can wreck everyone’s mood. They can bring out the worst in us. I see families completely on edge and anxious because difficult transitions rule their daily lives.
Transitions can be particularly hard for children, and they can be nearly impossible around the holidays.
One of the hardest transitions is from a preferred activity to a non-preferred activity, like leaving a play date to getting in the car. But for some children, all transitions are difficult.
Before we can improve transitions for our children, we need to fully understand what is happening during a transition. Many unseen things occur when going from one activity to another.
Think about what happens when you visit a friend’s home for the first time. Your sensory system goes into high alert and takes in everything. Your eyes scan the room taking in all the new sights, assessing for risk, and noticing the light brightness. Your nose notices how the room smells and registers pleasant scents and noxious odors. Your ears notice the sounds in the room including fans, music, outdoor noises, and different voices. Your skin and body register temperature and whether it feels comfortable, too cold, or too hot. Your hands take in the feel of different surfaces in the room. Your vestibular system and proprioceptive system register if the floor is even and what type of surface you are standing on.
Shortly after you arrive, your sensory system settles and begins to habituate. What this means is your sensory system grows accustomed to all the new sensory information and shifts it to background or otherwise unnoticed input. Habituation allows us to begin experiencing new information in a new setting. Because of habituation, we can now hold a conversation, participate in activities, and learn new information.
For people who don’t habituate easily or well, their sensory system continues to register that same introductory information at the same intensity for a much longer time. Some register the introductory information intensely for the entire time they are there.
A child with strong habituation walks in, notices the new environment, registers it, and then is able to transition easily in and out of new settings or activities.
A child with weak habituation is still fully and intensely registering the buzz of the fluorescent lights, or the smell of the candle burning, or the sound of the HVAC system blowing air through the vents hours into the visit and sometimes for the entire time.
By the end of the visit, their little sensory system is exhausted (and sometimes in overload) from taking in all that information.
Or their little sensory system is finally settling into the new environment and beginning to habituate right when you mention it is time to leave. In this case, the child usually strongly protests having to make another transition out of that setting.
Some children may just cling to their parent’s side the entire time, trying to protect their little sensory system from going into full overload.
We can’t see habituation and most children don’t have words to describe it, so they communicate the state of their sensory system via meltdowns and fits. Strong experiences elicit strong communication methods.
Without knowing, we view these meltdowns as bad behavior or label these children as difficult and inflexible. And so starts the cycle of the misunderstood child.
Also, without knowing, others begin to pass judgment on the parents of these children, believing that they have poor parenting skills. And so starts the cycle of the misunderstood parent.
Strong habituation makes transitions easy and uncomplicated, and weak habituation makes transitions unbearable. Now that we understand the reason transitions are hard, it is so much easier to effectively implement strategies to improve them! Check out my next blog for strategies to make transitions easier for your child and your family! Together we can end the trials of the misunderstood child and parent.