Transitions

I never really noticed how many transitions were in the day until I tried to plan out our homeschooling schedule.
Our first year of homeschooling was a weird mixture of optimism, enthusiasm, and perfectionism (on Mama’s part). I think, in part, to prove to our children’s therapy team that homeschooling really was a valid option for two kiddos on the spectrum and a Mama with a chronic collagen related disorder to thrive.

But oh the transitions, I forgot about transitions. Even homeschooling itself was a transition after a year of in home IBI therapy for our oldest with a steady stream of 1-1 or 2-1 therapists and our youngest getting Mama to himself all day. Changing subjects was a transition, bathroom – transition, snacks -transition, recess- transition. In those early days, for one kiddo, something as simple as turning the page, or choosing a new crayon colour was a transition that needed faced and overcome.

I was not prepared y’all. Turns out, I like transitions, oops. Thankfully we’ve had a few years to work on skills, structure, and mellowing out (mostly Mama but also the boys too)

For us, the biggest thing was structure. Our pediatrician, OT, and PT all stressed the importance of giving everyone time to prep for transitions. Sounds fine but we also quickly realized that each of our kiddos needed support in different ways here’s what works for us.

For one kiddo warning him about transitions is key but no clocks or timer! We realized that a verbal warning at 5, 2, 1 minutes left helps him start mentally disengaging from one activity and preparing for the next. If we’re doing two subjects back to back between fidget breaks then a verbal schedule really helps as well (got to love that First Then language).

We also realized that a timer or clock was too stressful and actually made transitions harder. For him countdowns are stressful, he worries about missing the transition and skips the task at hand so he doesn’t miss what’s coming. So verbal it is and we’ll watch and trial written schedules as his reading improves.

Our youngest is the opposite. He hates verbal reminders, passionately, so we went back to the drawing board. We tried visual schedules (I think he cut it up and made a boat out of it with some duct tape), we tried First/Then but he just didn’t remember. Someone suggested a check list, even though the kid’s in kindergarten. Guess what, it works, he gets such a sense of accomplishment out of checking off a list the checklist became it’s own reward. Some ideas are worth putting aside the skepticism.

Does this work all the time? Nope everyone has their off day and that includes Mama (who, yes, has lost the whiteboard for the checklist before, oops) but I’ve been amazed at how well the structure has allowed for transferable skills.

The structure also definitely helps on my bad days as, lets face it, even most adults function better with routines and warnings not to mention the ability to prep the day or weekend before. That said, we also notice that structure cannot become stagnant, people change, needs change and sometimes new adaptions are needed.