7 Ways to Help Children with Transitions and Anxiety
What if making life predictable for your child is actually increasing their anxiety?
It sounds counterintuitive, especially if you’re raising a sensitive child or are very familiar with neurodivergent children and transitions. You’ve probably worked hard to create routines, stability, and predictability. You may think: If I can just reduce surprises, my child won’t get overwhelmed.
But here’s the truth: shielding our children from change can actually increase childhood anxiety.
What You'll Learn About Parenting a Child with Anxiety:
Somatic responses to anxiety & practices to empower children
My Somatic Cognitive Behavioural Therapy approach for childhood anxiety
Understanding how to ease childhood transitions and anxiety from nervous system perspective
The importance of choice to create nervous system safety & reduce overwhelm
Scroll down if you prefer to explore with me on YouTube!
Why Predictability Alone Doesn’t Prevent Childhood Anxiety
Like most parents, I instinctively want to shield my children from distress, out of love. But when it comes to helping children with inevitable transitions of life, whether it be from screen to nature-time, or the start of a new school year — it means preparation and support.
Imagine a child who’s barely been exposed to water. The first time they encounter a pool, ocean, or lake would be terrifying. But if we slowly build their skills in a safe and supportive way, they would eventually learn how to float, paddle, and swim.
Transitions are the same. If we remove every change, we rob children of the safe practice they need to learn resilience. Instead of becoming more confident, they become more fearful of the unknown.
Childhood anxiety during transitions often stems not from the transition itself, but from a lack of experience and support in navigating it.
A Real Example: Transition anxiety in children
This year we moved across the city - an hour away. We talked about it for about 6 months prior to, to help our girls (then 3 and 6) understand what it would entail and ask questions. I’m grateful we did because due to a flood we moved 6 weeks earlier than planned, which would have shocked their systems if we hadn’t had ongoing conversations.
In the two months prior, my eldest cried every day before going to school. It broke my heart.
But here’s what I noticed: once she understood in greater detail what the change involved, that she was part of our decision-making, and with reassurance through every step, she found her footing.
What really rocked her was she didn’t know what to expect - transition anxiety, not the change itself. As soon as we moved, despite the hour commute each way for the last month of school, she was back to her sunny self! She learned she could survive a big change with support.
Foundations of Helping Children with Anxiety
Foundations of helping children through transitions are compassion and choice. If we want our children to face life’s changes with confidence, they must first know: I am safe and I am understood.
This means carving out time for compassionate connection every day, in a way that speaks to their love language - quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation, physical connection, gifts. We all have a combination, but notice how they try to connect with you, that is likely their love language.
So when your child is making you crazy sensory seeking all over your body - this is the physical touch they need to know they are safe and loved. When they bring you fallen flowers or a special stone, this is a gift to cherish. Neurodivergent and sensitive children in particular, need this sense of safety in connection to foster calm in their nervous system. And when this is nurtured, they are more likely to trust us through uncertain moments.
Choice offers us a sense of control, and something that children often don’t get. This empowers them with ownership, critical thinking skills, and allows them to ease the anxiety connected with change... rather than feeling the need to internalize and mask or be completely overwhelmed.
6 Tools to Support Childhood Anxiety & Transition Anxiety
So how do we shift from “protecting from change” to “preparing for change”? Here are five powerful tools I use with my children and recommend to families I work with:
1. Build Awareness of Your Own Relationship with Change
Children learn how to react from us. If we scream at a spider, they’ll likely fear spiders too. If we brace ourselves with dread at every transition, our children pick up on that.
Ask yourself: How do I frame change? Do I model flexibility or fear?
By becoming aware of our own responses, we can show children that transitions, while sometimes uncomfortable (like a flood), are survivable — maybe even an exciting adventure!
2. Nervous System Support for Transition Anxiety - Before, During, and After
For sensitive and neurodivergent children who have a narrower window of tolerance, nervous system support is non-negotiable. When your child stims, they’re trying to discharge the energy - they know! Think of it as giving the brain and body the capacity to handle stress.
Tools may include:
Breath practices (slow exhales to calm the system)
Movement (shaking, their version of yoga, dancing)
Creative outlets (art, journaling, music, singing)
Somatic practices (tapping, earthing in nature, co-regulation with you)
Before a transition, regulate together. During the transition, stay attuned and responsive. Afterwards, debrief and soothe the nervous system again.
3. Reducing Childhood Anxiety Through Play and Conversation
Preparation builds trust and confidence. Instead of eliminating change, ease children into it.
Role play upcoming transitions through play with dolls or stuffies. They likely already are, so ask to join and allow them to lead and share through these characters.
Storytelling is another way to explore the situation, what might happen, what might feel exciting, and what worries might come up.
Practice “micro transitions” like offering the choice to change seating at the dinner table, enabling them to build resilience gradually. Choice is really important, especially for our PDAers.
Normalizing and validating the experience helps! Our bodies are doing their job when we feel anxious - they are alerting us to something just like our dog might bark at a friend, mailman, or someone they don’t know coming to the door. We can either get scared or tell our pup ‘thank you, I’ve got this’. It’s the same with our body.
4. Visual Cues to Support Transition Anxiety
While predictability alone won’t prevent anxiety, it can support transitions when used intentionally. Visual calendars, schedules, or cards for sequences of events help children know what’s coming, especially for non-speaking or highly visual learners.
This can be a fun activity to create these together and gives them a sense of ownership, pride and control or choice over the upcoming transitions to ease anxiety.
Pair visual tools with conversations and co-regulation also helps to ease transition.
5. Processing Anxiety through Somatic Exploration
The tools in #2 are Somatic in nature and are generally needed to return to a parasympathetic state (rest, digest, socialize) so we can go this step further of understanding the emotions in our body - a life-skill:
Invite your child to notice what they feel in their body when thinking about a transition - build emotional awareness rather than stuffing it for it to build further anxiety: Is there a tightness in the stomach? A flutter in the chest? A lump in the throat?
How can they help release this? Work with nervous system responses - Fight: Roaring like a lion? Flight: A run? Fawn: A hug? Freeze: Often shows up with unawareness of physiological responses - like reverting to pre-potty training - this needs a whole lot of love to help the child feel safe again and often gets dismissed.
Share your own experience in age-appropriate ways. For example: “When I started a new job, I felt butterflies in my stomach too. That’s my body’s way of saying this new thing is exciting but also making me feel nervous.”
Helping our children tune into their body and learn to trust their body wisdom is one of the greatest life-skills we can learn! It helps to keep us safe and release energy before it builds into overwhelm and anxiety.
6. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Childhood Anxiety
Emotions and physiology (Somatic work) precede our thoughts and emotions - this is why I blend CBT with my Somatic work. Our bodies know before our mind can make sense of it… this again is very true for sensitive, preverbal or non-speaking individuals… and why a Somatic approach is so important to help prevent anxiety. Our bodies are wise!
When we look at a situation - let’s say struggling with bedtime transitions, we can explore:
Physiology - How does the body feel? Tight shoulders, short breath etc
Emotions - Fear, anxiety
Thoughts - “I’m afraid of the dark”
Behaviours - Delaying bedtime, popping out of bed every 10 minutes, crying etc.
As parents we may just see the delays and might get frustrated with it night after night, which leads to butting heads and further amped up emotions and anxiety.
When we compassionately explore the physiology, emotions, thoughts, and resulting behaviours with our child we can help them get to the root of their concerns… and support them in creating change that feels safe, helping them to build confidence.
Emotion - How do you want to feel? Relaxed, safe, calm..
Physiology - What does that feel like in your body? Light, soft shoulders, easy to breathe etc
Thought - Is there a thought or something you can say to yourself to help you feel this? “Mommy & Daddy are right there and keeping me safe”
Behaviour - How can we help reinforce this? Jellyfish breath with legs up the wall etc
BONUS!
One of my favourite, simple practices for nervous system calming is chanting SA TA NA MA, ("birth, life, transition, rebirth") a mantra about change that incorporates sound and tapping to soothe the nervous system. In fact, this mantra has been scientifically proven to help prevent and reverse early dementia!
Why Transitions Trigger Anxiety
Even for adults, change isn’t easy. A new job, an unexpected move, or even an exciting trip can stir up nerves… but when we have choice, this can make a big difference. Anxiety and excitement often also feel the same…and we can feel both at the same time! Now imagine being a child — without the context, life experience, or sense of control adults have.
It makes perfect sense that their nervous system might go on high alert - especially for neurodivergent children and times of transition. When we frame it this way, childhood anxiety during transitions becomes not a mystery, but an understandable and totally reasonable response.
We still talk about our sudden move, and as we transition to new schools I am prepared that more will come up. But I also know our girls are building the skills and confidence to face changes - and for children with anxiety and PDAers - this
The Parent’s Nervous System Matters Too
So much of a child’s success in transitions depends on our capacity as parents. If our nervous system is overwhelmed, we’re more likely to react with frustration, fear, or control. But when we can ground ourselves first, we can co-regulate and show up as a calm anchor.
Supporting yourself is not selfish — it’s foundational to helping your child.
Shifting the Mindset to Help Child Through Transition Anxiety:
So do we:
Avoid all transitions and hope anxiety disappears?
Or help our children build the confidence to handle change with resilience?
When we choose the second path, we empower our children for life.
Making life predictable may feel like love, but when we compassionately guide our children with a compassionate understanding of the nervous system, we don’t just ease childhood anxiety — we raise resilient, authentic, and confident humans.
Change is inevitable — but anxiety doesn’t have to rule it.
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🌺 Katie
