It’s Not When, But HOW We Say Goodbye: Letting Go In Small Moments
Jo from Well Within Reach recently published this insightful blog post about change and transition. She says it’s important to help our children move on to the next stage in their life by properly saying goodbye to what they are leaving.
Despite the onset of autumn being a timely reminder of the necessity and maybe even beauty of change, for those of us who work and/or live with children, it can be far less gentle a process than it is for Mother Nature. We hit the ground running in September.
And this can also be true for children, especially those making significant school transitions.
Directly or indirectly, it’s part of the practice of many of us to help kids adapt to change, whether we live or work with them, or both.
However, most days when I pick my son up from school, I am reminded about an element of transition support that’s often left undone.
Because a noticeable cohort of Year 7 children – no longer primary school pupils – are still reliably on the playground at home time.
Not to pick up younger siblings, but to visit their old classrooms, talk to their old teachers and re-experience being at the top of the pecking order, no doubt.
Are they managing the transition into secondary school? Yes.
Perhaps not so much the exit out of primary school. They’re still not ready to let go.
We often think that grief and loss are just for death and dying. Or have unrealistic expectations about ‘getting on with things’ or ‘learning to live with it‘; after all, ‘what’s done is done’, or nothing ‘bad’ is actually happening.
But old habits die hard…
At whatever age we are, change-management is not just about the newness in front of us, but what gets left behind.
Even welcome change is difficult to adapt to, because it requires our brains to change.
New neural pathways need to form and establish so the brain can efficiently recognise this new situation and process the information.
And this can take time; forget ‘nine repetitions’ or three weeks to form a new habit. It’s never that simple.
Think about what the brain has to UNlearn, not just RElearn.
Depending on the nature of the change at hand, it can take months, or even years to adjust. Sometimes, we’ll never quite get there.
Hence, it’s important to really intentionally support the children we live and work with (and sometimes ourselves) with this often-turbulent process of reprogramming a brain, whether it’s for change yet to arrive, or that which has already passed.
Counter-intuitive as it may feel, when their worries or sadnesses bubble to the surface – as they so often do – it’s not a sign of ‘poor resilience’. There’s a time for ‘growth mindset’, for optimism and hopefulness – I advocate for all of them in most situations – but healthy transitions aren’t about sweeping discomfort under the carpet, or window-dressing it with ‘being positive’.
There are also times to just let difficult feelings be.
I’m not saying we just leave children to struggle on their own; we can be alongside them while they process and adjust.
And that may mean accepting our own discomfort; the awkwardness that comes with resisting problem-solving territory… Easier said than done when it’s so instinctive to fire from ‘fix it’ mode.
In all their varied forms, ‘endings’ might just take one day, or one hour or even just one minute. But saying goodbye can take a whole lot longer.
Endings are at the heart of much of my work, but having a child who’s just entered year 6, I’m acutely aware of every ‘last time’ on the horizon between now and July…
Yesterday morning I grieved a little for the probable last Harvest Festival of his school career.
And again in the evening when I ordered my final Christmas card design paraphernalia.
We often don’t get a choice about how endings materialise, of course.
But when we do, ‘ending well’ isn’t just about when we say goodbye, but how; consciously, and perhaps painfully, letting go in small moments.
What are you letting go of today? What are you helping your children to let go of?
