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Transitions

Thresholds, handled gently

New schools, new homes, new siblings — preparing children for change before it arrives.

The FeatureCo-Parenting

The shadows of two people standing together on sunlit pavement

The Handover in the School Car Park

Ninety seconds between two cars, in public, with a child's backpack as the only witness. Handovers are where separated co-parenting is most visible — and most likely to go wrong. Here is how to make them survivable.

Reviewed by Sian TrombleyCanadian Certified Counsellor

The archive

More in Transitions

Two people holding hands during a supportive conversation

Trauma

What Safety Actually Feels Like to a Child

A locked door and a stable roof are not the same thing as felt safety. Here is what a child's nervous system…

A hand-painted WORK IN PROGRESS sign in a darkened shop window

Trauma

Behaviour Is the Last Thing to Change

Recovery from trauma doesn't show up first as better behaviour. It shows up as capacity — the ability to notice, to pause,…

A packed travel bag with a passport and boarding pass resting on top

Family Life

When a Parent Works Away From Home

What repeated goodbyes do to a child, and how families make the rhythm survivable.

A child at a kitchen table quietly watching a parent's back across the room in morning light

Family Life

The One Watching You for Weather: The Child Who Worries About Their Parent

Some children track their parent's mood the way sailors track the sky. It looks like sensitivity, and it is often praised. Underneath,…

A small child standing on their parent's boots on a woodland path

Anxiety

The Child Who Follows You Everywhere: Clinginess at Home

They are fine at school and fine at their grandmother's. At home, they will not let you out of the room.

A child peeking out from under a white duvet pulled over their head

Sleep

The Child Who Cannot Fall Asleep Without You

Every evening ends the same way: on the floor beside their bed, waiting for their breathing to change.

People crossing a city street in low golden morning light, long shadows ahead of them

Confidence

The First Shift: A Teenager's First Job

A part-time job can build more confidence than a year of encouragement — or quietly dismantle it.

A polaroid photograph of an empty set of swings in a summer garden

Family Life

The Room They Left: When Your Eldest Moves Out

The week your eldest moves out for university, work or a first flat brings a grief nobody warns parents about. Here is…

A school-aged child sitting by a rain-streaked window with schoolbooks nearby

Anxiety

Climate Anxiety in Children

When a child’s worry about the planet becomes a nightly fear about the future, they need honesty and agency, not reassurance that…

A child looking out of a window, waiting

Family Life

The Suitcase by the Door: When a Parent Travels for Work

What children actually need when a parent travels for work, and why the leaving matters less than the returning.

A shopfront window with a blue neon sign reading WHAT IS YOUR STORY?

Attachment

Telling the Adoption Story Well

Your child's story is theirs to hold. Your job is to tell it truthfully, at the right pace, without flinching or overselling…

An eleven-year-old boy at a kitchen table studying a paper family calendar with a pen, quietly focused, soft morning light

Anxiety

The Child Who Needs to Know the Plan

When every change of schedule triggers a hundred questions, you are not raising a controlling child. You are raising one who cannot…

A ten-year-old dropping their school bag in the hallway at home while a parent watches from the doorway

Behaviour

Why They Save It All For You

Angelic at school, feral at home. The most misunderstood compliment in parenting.

A twelve-year-old girl in school uniform standing composed by a window, a faint distance in her expression

Trauma

The Child Who Seems Fine

After something frightening, some children fall apart. Others become impeccable. The second group worries me more.

An eleven-year-old girl sitting on a staircase at night listening, warm light spilling from a doorway below

Family Life

When a Child Hears You Arguing

Conflict itself is not the damaging part. Unresolved conflict, witnessed and never explained, is.

Two twelve-year-old girls walking home from school together on a suburban pavement, one glancing back, late afternoon light

Friendships

When Your Child Copies a Difficult Friend

The eye-rolling, the new tone, the sudden unkindness — and why banning the friendship almost always backfires.

A family sitting together on the sand at the beach, feet in the foreground, late afternoon sun

Family Life

The Holiday That Fell Apart

Why the week you planned for months so often produces the worst behaviour of the year.

A closed bedroom door with a peeling childhood drawing and a teenage denim jacket on the handle

Child Development

The Body That Changed Overnight

Puberty arrives earlier than most families are ready for. The conversation should arrive earlier still.

An older sibling's small shoes beside a newborn's woven bassinet in a sunlit bedroom

Sibling Relationships

When the New Baby Arrives

The first child does not gain a sibling. They lose a monopoly. Both things are true, and only one of them gets…

Young people gathered around a campfire in the woods at night

Resilience

The First Night Away

Homesickness is not weakness. It is attachment doing its job in the wrong postcode — and it is highly trainable.

A twelve-year-old girl at a kitchen island beside a parent and a new partner, all mid-conversation

Family Life

The Fourth Chair: When a New Partner Joins the Family

Blended families do not fail because the adults love each other too little. They struggle because the roles were never agreed.

The long shadows of a group of friends cast across a pavement

Friendships

The Friend Who Stopped Sitting With Them

Friendship groups shift without warning around nine to twelve. It is not always bullying — and it still hurts like something broke.

A glowing sign spelling FOCUS against a dark background

ADHD

Pacing the Day for ADHD Brains

ADHD brains do not run out of willpower. They run out of dopamine, executive fuel, and novelty. The right pacing protects the…

Two siblings sitting back to back on a sofa, one holding a games controller

Sibling Relationships

What Sibling Rivalry Is Really About

It is not the toy. It is not the seat. It is the question of whether there is enough love, attention, and…

A hallway threshold in low morning light with a child stepping out of the door, coat mid-motion

Executive Functioning

The Hardest Part of the Day: Helping Children Handle Transitions

Not the bath. Not the meal. The moment of moving from one thing to the next. Transitions are where most family friction…

A small wooden chair beside a half-open door with a single folded note left on the seat

Behaviour

The Truth About Lying: What Children Are Really Protecting

A child who lies is almost never a child with a character problem. They are a child solving a problem — usually…

Hands turning the pages of a journal beside old photographs

Grief

Small Griefs: Helping Children Carry Loss and Change

Children do not grieve in a straight line, and they rarely grieve when we are ready. What they need is not the…

A games controller resting on a desk in a darkened room, screen light glowing behind it

Digital World

When the Game Ends: Why Screen Transitions Are So Explosive

The fight is almost never about the game. It is about being pulled out of a state that was regulating them, without…

Two adults sitting across a table with coffee, hands mid-conversation

Co-Parenting

When Parents Disagree: The Argument Children Actually Hear

Two people raised in two different families are now improvising a third one. Children can tolerate a great deal of difference between…

Two children sitting on a blanket in a sunlit empty room, looking out a large window with moving boxes softly blurred in the foreground

Family Life

Everything in Boxes: Moving House With Children

A move looks like logistics to adults. To a child it is the removal of every external structure they use to feel…

A neon sign reading and breathe set into a wall of green leaves

Emotional Regulation

Borrowing Calm: How Children Regulate Through Us

Children cannot regulate themselves in a room where no one else is regulated. Co-regulation is the whole mechanism — and it is…

An eleven-year-old in school uniform resting their head on their hand at the kitchen table before school

School Refusal

When School Becomes Too Much: Understanding School Refusal

School refusal is almost never about school. It is about a nervous system that has learned mornings are dangerous — and it…

Two hands meeting on a quiet dark street in black and white

Family Life

How to Repair After You Lose Your Temper

The rupture is not the thing that shapes a child. What happens in the two hours afterwards is — and most of…

A family eating breakfast together in a bright kitchen, a girl looking towards the camera

Family Life

The Family Climate: The Emotional Weather Children Grow In

Children do not grow up in a set of parenting techniques. They grow up in a weather system — and the weather…

A teenager sitting on the end of a bed with a parent visible in the hallway light

Teen Mental Health

When Your Teenager Stops Talking to You

Silence at fifteen is rarely rejection. It is a developmental task, a bid for privacy, and sometimes a signal — and it…

A child's bedroom prepared for sleep at dusk with a small warm lamp and books

Sleep

The Science of Sleep: Why Bedtime Falls Apart and How to Rebuild It

Almost every difficulty a family brings to therapy is worse on four hours' sleep. Bedtime is not a discipline issue — it…

A young teenager in a new school blazer waiting alone at a bus stop on a grey early morning

School

The Year Everything Gets Bigger

The move to secondary school asks a twelve-year-old brain to manage eight teachers, a new social order and a locker combination —…

A hallway with a child's backpack on one hook and a set of house keys on a second hook, morning light through an open door

Family Life

How to Tell the Children: Talking About Divorce and Separation

Separation is not what harms children most. Conflict they are placed in the middle of is. Here is how to have the…

Other collections

Anxiety & Worry ADHD & Executive Functioning Behaviour & Positive Parenting Big Emotions Emotional Regulation School & Learning

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