Author: Breanna Kinney-Orr
I spend a large part of my day, than you might estimate, acting as a timer.
“Five more minutes to play – then we’re going to put our shoes on and get in the car.”
“You’ve got one more minute to finish your dinner – then I’m going to put your plate in the sink and we’ll start getting ready for bed.”
“I’m going to tell Alexa to put two minutes on the clock – then you have to give that toy to your brother and find something else to play with.”
The life of a three-year old boy – and by extension, his 45 year mother – is FULL of transitions.
(Exponentially more so, when you’ve got a twin brother!)
And since so much of my day is continually reminding, role-playing, and reinforcing the boundaries that come with transitional moments, it got me thinking – why do we pay so much attention to them in the realm of parenting, and almost zero attention in the realm of ‘adulting?’
Surely if transitions are such a big deal for the three-and-under crowd to grasp, the weight they hold should carry into adulthood, right?
Yet, during the day, and especially during the evening hours, I am either on autopilot, or continually mentally hurrying myself along, with nary a reflective pause or intentional reset to prepare for the Next Thing to come.
When do transitions become less important?
Well… the short answer is – they don’t. As adults, we just get better at managing the emotions that come up when we transition from one thing to the next. Or perhaps, more accurately, we sometimes fall into a pattern of coping with the more intense emotions that arise during stressful transitions by carrying them around with us.
In other words, we learn to compartmentalize, for better or worse. Has a version of this ever happened to you? You swallow down your stress throughout a particularly tough day, packing it away bit by bit, until you walk through the front door carrying every odd item that you’ve attempted to clear from your car and bring inside in one trip. Upon seeing you for the first time that afternoon your kid immediately starts relaying an elaborate, highly-charged incident that happened at school, while at the same time your partner is asking you what’s for dinner…and you LOSE it.
Which begs the question… are our strategies of autopiloting, compartmentalizing, and ‘getting on with it’ really working, or not?
Transitions deserve our attention
As we get older, the stakes of our transitions mature too. While we often ask our little ones to move from a pleasurable activity, like playing, to one that is decidedly less exciting-but-necessary, like washing up for dinner, the strategy for managing a peaceful mental shift remains the same. The added complexity for us adults is that we are often asked to jump from one intense activity to another, and most times, both deserve our full engagement.
When we coach our kids through a tough transition we follow these steps – validate what they are doing, name the feeling that comes with it, reiterate how much time they have left to wrap things up, followed by a head’s up for what’s to come so that they know what to expect. We then repeat this core process, over, and over, and over again, until the prompts are no longer needed.
Except, maybe as adults, we could benefit from a grown-up version of transition prompts.
The point is – what might happen if we were to return to our roots? Or, if we didn’t have a great support system as kids to teach us about and then guide us through transitions, we become that guide for ourselves now?
A helpful practice
Try this out: the next time you approach a transition moment – let’s say, as you shift from a highly charged conversation at work to a meeting you are scheduled to lead – take a beat.
Quiet your mind and close your eyes.
Pause by taking a few breaths and pay attention to the sound they make entering and exiting your body to anchor yourself to the present.
Acknowledge what you’re feeling and decide if you want to approach what you do next carrying that feeling with you, or if you can observe it, and then let it go.
Understand via this brief moment of self-awareness how your current state might inform your next actions to come.
Strategize your next move accordingly – are you ready to jump in, or do you need… a snack? A bathroom break? What is your priority?
Execute your next action item, knowing that sometimes there’s a certain type of peace that comes from releasing our hold on the outcome, and committing to accepting what may come with grace.
These are the steps to a Q Mind Skill – Q-PAUSE – one that’s particularly helpful during moments of transitions.
Now, I’m not saying you need all of these deliberate steps when you’re moving from say, cleaning up dinner and into bedtime routines…but…it might just be the perfect opportunity to remind ourselves how important moments of transition really are – at any age.