When High School Looms Near
For many parents, the transition to high school is an emotional, exciting, and worrisome transition. Where did the time go? How did they get so big? Why are they so sassy? What has hormones done with my child?!?
Here at school there are many ways we support this transition to high school. We engage with the high school in advance to communicate student need and we bring the high school in to the classroom to ensure that students know the options available to them. Students get to take a trip (or several, depending on the need) to the school in person so that they understand the layout of the school and it doesn’t seem so overwhelming.
As a counsellor, I often normalize the new feelings and often new confusion that comes with the changes appropriate for this time in life (TEENAGERS!). I share with students that part of what makes being a teenager so wonderful, so dreadful, so exciting, so confusing, is the reality that their body and brain are beginning a great journey. Their child brain is dismantling so that their adult brain can be built. The transition between these two brains is what we call adolescence. And now sprinkle on the hormones, right?
Here below is a great, short video from Dr. Dan Siegel on this topic. If you want to go more in depth into the work of Dr. Daniel Siegel on this topic, click here. If a book in the hand is more your style, check out this topic more in depth on the page in his book, titled BRAINSTORM: THE POWER AND PURPOSE OF THE TEENAGE BRAIN.