Transition: Setting up your child for success

So let's talk about transition. And, you know, a lot of times transition, people think I'm talking about when you're about to graduate high school, but transition is any time you're moving from one thing to another. So how does your child move from class to class? How does your child move from grade to grade? How did they move from building to building? You know, if our child's receiving special ed services, there's a ton of information in their IEP and in their folder that's useful. I'm not saying it's not good information, but often it's what I call deficit-based. It's about what the child can't do, will never do, isn't good at. And none of us move into a new position or a new place with new people by proclaiming all of our deficits. We like to lead with, here's who I am. Here's what I'm good at. Here's what I love. Here's what I love to do. Here's what other people like about me or admire about me that will help me be a valuable person in your classroom or in your building. We have to begin to recognize those things and help our own children recognize those things in themselves and learn to introduce them that way, rather than here's my child. He has this label. He is functioning at this grade level. He's not able to do that. And that's unfortunately that's how we lead often when we're introducing our son or daughter to a new grade, a new teacher, a new building, even a new out of high school into a career. We have to learn how to lead with what they're good at, what they love to do, what they want to do as adults and how we can begin to prepare them for that, what other people like or admire about them. That's how the rest of us want to be introduced. Why would we want it to be any different for our kids?