Cyp 3.1 - 5.1 & 5.2

Understand the potential effects of transitions on children and young people’s development

Transition is something that everyone has to go through throughout their life. It is a process in which something undergoes a change and passes from one stage to another. Children experience this a lot, including family changes, school changes or body changes and this can affect their development if not dealt with in an appropriate and quick way.

Different types of transitions | Examples |
Family Structure | Parents splitting up, step siblings, step-parents, family living with them |
Moving House | Changing house, changing of area eg: country, city |
Illness or Bereavement | Loss or illness of family member or friend |
New/additional primary carer | Starting nursery, being with a childminder, moving into foster care |
Moving settings | Changes from pre-school to school, infants to juniors, leaving care |
Admission into institution | Going into hospital, youth offenders, boarding school |
Changes to body | Accidents, illness, puberty, chronic illness |

All these types of transitions can extremely affect a child and cause issues with their development. There are many different ways children will react to these.
Regression: their behaviour will return to an earlier, less developed way of behaving eg: like a baby
Aggression: this causes anger and threatening behaviour and actions possibly towards other people and objects
Withdrawn: this is where they will avoid social situations and be quiet/shy to a worrying degree
Clinginess: children will become dependant and unwilling to leave the sight of a familiar adult or primary carer
Illness: genuine or psychosomatic – stomach ache, cold and flu, cold sores are common ones
Extraverted behaviours: Seeking ways of gaining attention all the time, outgoing, happy
Sleeplessness: crying before bedtime, lack of sleeping, waking in the night, nightmares
Lack of concentration: difficulty in focusing on...