Dr. Cristina Sevadjian

Hi Covenant Friends,

“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." 

The end of April and beginning of May are often challenging times of the year for students, parents, and teachers. The activities seem endless, the days feel long, and we are all tired and likely short on patience. Summer feels so close, yet still beyond our grasp. This time of year can also involve impending changes from leaving an old classroom, moving from Grammar to Logic, moving to a new school, ending an activity/sport, and even graduation. While these changes can feel exciting and scary, it is important to help our children learn how to say goodbye and end well.

I have noticed in my professional career that endings tend to be emotional - even adults have a hard time ending well. It is hard because it requires us to hold the tension between two opposing emotions such as sadness and joy and/or excitement and fear. Holding tension within ourselves is very difficult, and much more difficult for our children. To resolve this tension, it is natural to want to make the thing bad that we are saying goodbye to, and focus solely on how the new thing is good or going to be so much better. It is important to help our children understand that some of the most joyful times of life correspond with sadness as well. For example, my youngest brother recently got married. While I felt so much joy for him finding his wife and welcoming a new sister in-law, I also felt sadness as his relationship with our family was changing.

This concept of ending well is challenging thus our children need some coaching. Some ideas of how to end well:

• Assist your child, depending on their age, to write a note to teachers/administrators demonstrating gratitude for ways they have impacted your child.
• Reinforce that while they might be excited about transitioning from Grammar to Logic, or Rhetoric to college, or even to a new school, it is important to speak well of the places that they are leaving.
• Have dinner table discussions on how changes in life can feel both happy and sad at the same time.
• Discuss the concept that it is natural and normal to experience two contrasting emotions at the same time, such as feeling both proud and scared on the first day of school, etc.
  • In younger kids we call these double-dip emotions (like having an ice cream cone with a vanilla scoop and chocolate scoop as it relates to these contrasting emotions).
• Ask your child about what they have learned from their old experiences and what they want to take with them as they move into a new stage/phase.
• In general conversation, or if they have social media or are on group texts, discuss the impact of how they speak about things that they are leaving behind.
  • Example: How might your friend feel who is staying in soccer if you talk about how happy and excited you are to quit? How might saying soccer stinks and so does the coach impact the team that you are leaving?
• Ask them what impact they want to leave on their friends, activities, teachers, schools, and/or division that they are leaving behind? How would they like to be remembered?
• How do they want to impact the new part of life that they are ushering in?
• How has the Lord used this season in their life? What are they grateful for?
• As you reflect on your own behavior, how do you model endings/goodbyes?