Moving Up Day: What to Expect Today (and Over the Holidays)
Today is moving up day and transition day in schools across the UK. Your child may have spent the morning in a new classroom, met a new teacher, or been at their new school and met new kids who will be in their class come September.
For some children, that’s exciting. For others, it brings up something a bit more unsettled. Both are completely normal.
Change is happening all the time; we just don’t always notice because it's a natural, constant process, happening every day, in every season, whether we notice it or not. Most of the time it’s so gradual we miss it completely. We don’t see our children becoming a little more independent day by day, until one moment it just strikes us how much they’ve grown.
Then there are the moments change becomes impossible to miss. The first day of nursery. The first day of school. A whole school year which has flown by, and suddenly it’s moving-up day, and your child is meeting a new teacher.
These moments aren’t separate from the everyday changes; they’re moments that prompt us to stop and notice.
What might show up today?
A quiet car journey home. More questions than usual. A bit of clinginess at pick up, even if today went well. None of this means something has gone wrong. It just means your child has taken in a lot of new information and is processing it.
What might show up over the holidays?
Not all feelings land straight away. Sometimes it’s a few weeks into the summer when a child suddenly asks who their teacher is again, or says they don’t want to go back. This is a sign their mind is circling back to something unresolved.
What helps?
Be curious, notice it and explore what it could mean together. "You've mentioned your new class a few times, sounds like it's on your mind."
Keep talking about it lightly across the summer, just small moments here and there.
If you're looking for a simple way to help your child untangle these feelings over the summer, the Little Moments, Big Feelings Journal gives them a few quiet minutes each day to notice what's going on inside, without it ever feeling like a big conversation. For a limited time, use code BRAVE10 for 10% off.
We'll have more on helping with the return to school and starting school in September. For now, if today brought up a few feelings, that's exactly what it's meant to do.
Remember: Feeling unsure about something new is not a problem to fix. It's just what happens when we face the unknown, and it's something everyone feels, including us as parents.
