7 ways to prepare for relational change in your family

I’m looking at my daughter’s empty bedroom shelves and I have waves of (almost) nausea hovering in the wings. She hasn’t even left yet but I miss her already. Tomorrow I take my eldest to Uni for the first time. It’s an obvious watershed; a significant moment of change and I’m trying to get my head around it… How do I relate to her as an independent adult, who essentially has now moved out of home? Do I even need to change how I speak to her or how our relationship works? How much can I or should I call or text while she’s away…?

At the other end of the spectrum my youngest is struggling to adjust to new demands of being at Infants school. This change was again perhaps also predictable in parenting terms, but there’s nuances to the changes he’s demonstrating I need to sense, new challenges in his behaviour to absorb, new complexity in our conversations to rise to, new surprises in the things he says to navigate. Some changes are less predictable and can catch you off guard.

Out of ten; how aware are you of the changes occurring in your child as they move from stage to stage, season to season, levelling up, maturing and developing constantly…? What unique or characteristic signs or markers are there that another change is happening; another small step up in your child’s development?

And there’s this: are we sometimes so busy parenting what’s in front of us, and concerned about preparing them for what’s ahead for them; that we forget to prepare ourselves to change, adapt and move on?