There’s lots of changes for young people throughout their lives, and they don’t always have a lot of say! Entering primary and high school, different classes each year with different teachers, new subjects, the introduction of exams, and more. It’s a turbulent time and that can create fear.

The reason that we often fear change is because it brings uncertainty, and people aren’t great at dealing with that. In fact, humans have a preference for things to remain the same, even if they know it’s not great! This is called “inertial thinking”.

Our minds stray to “things could always be worse” and so we fear that change. Especially for young people, they won’t have learned enough life lessons to give them evidence that change can be for the best, especially when we express some agency in those moments and make decisions for the best.

It’s one of the first rules of cognitive and behavioural development, don’t make big changes in the face of big changes! It’s too easy to fall into the trap of feeling that if we’re anticipating adversity in one aspect of our life, we should compensate. The reason this isn’t healthy is because it means as a guardian or a guide, you’ll be unable to get the information you need to help your young person.

If something challenging happens, or is going to happen, and you make big changes in routine or approach, then who’s to say if that helped or hindered? Making changes should be incremental, and guided by how well we can then adapt to it to help plan next steps. This is also how we teach risk intelligence, and build resilience.

Consistency is key, and making too many changes too quickly means that only one or two might be able to be adapted to, and many benefits might be lost. Perhaps things would have been better with fewer changes? It’s impossible to know.

What we DO know though, is that if we harness change we can create positive outcomes and lessons. Change gives us the opportunity firstly to confront, understand and experience the thoughts and emotions which surround it. For young people especially this is critical as they will be experiencing this often for the first time, and as they grow, for the first time with different neurological and social structures.

Secondly, changes give us the opportunity to create strategies and processes to navigate those moments. Especially when guided by family and mentors who can help place it in context, and who can suggest strategies based on their experiences. This will help us in future occurrences when we need to navigate change as well, not just this time.

Finally, changes give us the opportunity to develop resilience. When we face and navigate change, it helps us to build our mental and emotional toughness. These lessons will impact every part of our lives for the better.

It’s the natural reaction though, to want to make change easier for our young people. However when we do this, it only makes their, and our, lives easier for a very short period. Long term, it will create 

If we reduce the challenge of change to a point someone is comfortable with, we’ve lost an opportunity to not only help them build healthy resilience, but we may have in fact set them back. When we tell someone the way to face change is to reduce it, we disempower them rather than teaching them to rise to it. Getting the balance right is always important, but the answer is never making it easy.

We can often leap to fearing the worst. If we model to young people that change is to be feared, they’ll learn that lesson. When we catastrophise what could happen, it will increase their risk aversion. It’s natural to want to reduce discomfort for our young people, but healthy discomfort is in no way harmful to them.

It can also be natural to want to give young people a “way out” before they even start. When you’re facing change, it can be reflexive to say “if you don’t like it you can stop” or something similar. If the young person wasn’t sure about using that way out before, it’ll be their first choice when the going gets tough. For young people who were going to work through it no matter what, it wasn’t needed.

We can create negative loops of behaviour which are reinforced by avoidance if we encourage, or otherwise promote avoiding the challenges of change. Young people will only accept change if it’s easy or on their terms.

Getting the balance right isn’t as hard as you might think, there’s a lot of margin for error! Young people are able to tolerate fairly large amounts of discomfort before it begins to affect them, and more importantly, we shouldn’t catastrophise failure! If whilst managing change a young person does happen to fail, that itself is a valuable lesson.

To harness change, all you need is a couple of easy steps:

• Step 1: Plan – Talk with your young person about the upcoming changes and how you might navigate it together. Anticipate challenges and create strategies for if they happen.
• Step 2: Navigate – Be there for them while they face the challenge. There will be times they want to quit, or give up, or make excuses. Help them find the “Grain Of Truth” and remember what they’re fighting for! They’ll let you know if it’s too much.
• Step 3: Reflect – Congratulate them on facing the change, no matter the outcome. Reflect equally on what was done well, what could have been done better, and what’s next.

While there will be tough times during this process, it’ll be worth it! Your young person will emerge from each change stronger and more resilient, and more autonomous and confident. Eventually, they’ll be teaching you!