Transition Anxiety Is Real: Helping a Child Adjust to Change with Storytelling
It’s a gut feeling we get as parents - we just know when something is going to throw our child off.
Maybe you’re anticipating the first day of school. Maybe a grandparent is moving. Maybe their favorite teacher just left, or a new sibling is on the way. Whatever the shift, you can already see the ripple effects forming.
The tantrums. The pushback. The sleep regression. The clinginess.
As a child psychologist and parent, I’ve seen these patterns over and over again. And I want to tell you something important: transition anxiety is real, and it’s totally normal.
But here’s the part that’s often missing from the conversation - helping a child adjust to change doesn’t require a perfect script, a Pinterest-worthy craft, or even a full therapy session. Sometimes, all it takes is a good story.
So let’s talk about exactly how to use storytelling as your go-to tool for navigating big emotions during times of transition…
The Importance of Storytelling to Child Development
Here’s the truth: our kids don’t need lectures. They need language. They need a framework to make sense of what’s happening inside them - and stories give them that.
The importance of storytelling to child development is massive. Stories teach kids how the world works, how people behave, and what’s possible when we feel things deeply. It’s why preschoolers obsess over picture books. It’s why we rewatch favorite movies. And it’s why even as adults, we seek comfort in memoirs, podcasts, and conversations with friends.
When it comes to helping a child adjust to change, stories create safe distance. They allow kids to hear the lesson without feeling like they’re in the spotlight. And in that safety, they open up.
So let’s get into the 5 steps I use with my own kids (and my clients) to turn stressful transitions into powerful emotional lessons.
Step 1: Get Clear on What’s Happening and How They Might Feel
The first step in helping a child adjust to change is simple but often skipped - take a moment to sit with what’s really going on.
Ask yourself:
What change is happening in my child’s life?
What emotions might be coming up for them?
What behaviors have I already noticed?
You don’t need a diagnosis or a deep dive. Just tune in. Is this a joyful change with a side of overwhelm (like a birthday or starting school)? A sad goodbye (like a caregiver moving away)? A big identity shift?
Understanding the emotional stakes helps you guide your child with more intention - and that’s the foundation of how to encourage a child to express their feelings later on.
Step 2: Create a Story That Mirrors Their Experience (Without Making It About Them)
Now comes the fun part.
You’re going to make up a simple story. Think fable, not novel. Pick an animal or character your child likes. Place them in a situation similar (but not identical) to what your child is facing.
Why? Because this slight detour creates emotional safety.
It gives them room to connect without shutting down. This is where the importance of storytelling to child development shines - children can learn from a character’s experience without feeling corrected or exposed.
In this podcast episode, I created a story about a bear who was turning six, starting school, and watching his grandparents move further away - all things the real child, “Jacob,” was dealing with. I wove those elements in gently, layering the story with emotional beats like excitement, nervousness, sadness, and even anger.
Don’t overthink it. Use your imagination, or borrow from theirs. (My daughter has a recurring character called “Baby Owl.”)
Step 3: Add a Simple Coping Strategy to the Story
Once your character is in the thick of their big emotions, it’s time to model a strategy that helps them cope.
This is your opportunity to embed real-life tools your child can access later. You’re teaching them how to encourage a child to express their feelings - without ever saying, “You should talk about your feelings.”
Some ideas:
Deep belly breathing
Hugging a comfort object
Drawing or using play
Asking a trusted grown-up for helpNaming the feeling out loud
For example, in Little Bear’s story, Mommy Bear recognizes the “Grrr” energy and helps him take three deep breaths. Later, they create a special teddy bear together to hold when the big feelings return.
That’s how you make it stick. Through story, through repetition, through warmth.
Step 4: Pause and Let Them Respond (Even If It’s in Disguise)
This is the quiet magic of storytelling.
When you finish the story - or even mid-story - pause. Watch your child. Let them comment. Let them correct you. Let them add to the narrative.
They might say:
“That bear sounds mad.”
“I think he needs a hug.”
“That’s like me, kind of.”
Or they might not say anything at all. That’s okay too. You’re planting seeds.
The key here is subtlety. You’re not demanding vulnerability. You’re creating an invitation for your child to share - when and if they’re ready.
This is the heart of how to encourage a child to express their feelings: not with pressure, but with presence.
Step 5: Don’t Over-Explain - Let the Story Do the Work
Once the story is told, resist the urge to launch into analysis.
You don’t need to say, “See? That’s just like what you’re going through.” Let it breathe. If your child wants to connect the dots, they will. If not, they’ve still absorbed the structure of a coping framework. You’ve still done the work of helping a child adjust to change - without overwhelming them.
Storytelling in this way builds emotional fluency, models regulation, and helps mitigate transition anxiety before it explodes into behavior.
What If You Trigger Feelings They Didn’t Know They Had?
Let’s address the classic fear: “What if I make it worse by bringing it up?”
You won’t.
Feelings don’t go away when we ignore them. They burrow deeper. What storytelling does is offer a soft landing. It normalizes big reactions. It shows them they’re not alone.
Talking about transition anxiety doesn’t cause it - it helps release it.
You Don’t Need to Be a Therapist to Do This
I say this as someone who is a therapist: you don’t need my degree to try this at home.
You’re already a storyteller. Every bedtime book, every silly animal voice, every made-up game is proof. The next time your child is facing a big change, you can use this tool. And you can trust that it works - even if it doesn’t result in a heart-to-heart right away.
You’re building emotional literacy. You’re building safety. You’re modeling what healthy processing looks like.
That’s the power of the importance of storytelling to child development.
Final Takeaway: When Change Is Coming, Lead with Connection
If you remember nothing else from this post, let it be this:
Stories soothe. Stories teach. And stories open the door to conversations that might otherwise stay locked shut.
When you're facing transition anxiety in your home - whether it's a move, a new teacher, a family shift, or just growing up - you can use these five simple steps to start helping a child adjust to change with warmth and wisdom:
Plan for what’s coming and name the big feelings
Tell a story that mirrors their experience
Add a coping tool inside the story
Let them join in (but don’t force it)
Step back and let the story land
You’ve got this. Truly.
Want the full story example and walkthrough?
Listen to this episode of the Educated Parent podcast:
Transition Anxiety Is Real: Helping a Child Adjust to Change with Storytelling
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[00:00:00] Leah Clionsky: Welcome to the Educated Parent Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Leah Clionsky, and today we're going to talk about an everyday problem that parents bring up to me all of the time. Here's the problem. They know that something is going to happen. They know that a change is coming, and they know that their child is going to have some big feelings about it.
[00:00:21] Leah Clionsky: How can they prepare their child for an event that's gonna bring up some emotions? That's what we're going to talk about today. You are listening to Educated Parent: the Parenting Podcast, where I teach you realistic expert parenting hacks to solve your everyday parenting problems so that you can reduce your stress, build your confidence as a parent, and raise thriving children.
[00:00:48] Leah Clionsky: My name is Dr. Leah Clionsky. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist, owner of Thriving Child Center and PCIT experts, child psychology practices, and a real life parent of two young children. I am the same as you. I am invested in being the best parent possible and raising thriving children. I also get overwhelmed.
[00:01:09] Leah Clionsky: I make mistakes and I forget what works. I do have three unique parenting advantages that you may not have a PhD in. Child clinical psychology. Over 15 years of clinical experience working with families and a network of other experts that I can text for parenting advice whenever I'm lost. I'm here to bring my expertise and my expert network.
[00:01:31] Leah Clionsky: To you so that we can solve your everyday parenting dilemmas together. I am so glad you're here. So today is another one of those episodes where it's one of our chats. It's just you and me, and we're gonna be talking about this situation that I feel like happens to all of us as parents. Where we know our kids best, right?
[00:01:52] Leah Clionsky: We know the things that tend to make them anxious and tend to make them angry, and the kinds of changes that are easy for them and the kinds of changes that are challenging for them and often. We can tell that there's something that's coming up that's going to be a little bit challenging, right? We know this about our child.
[00:02:12] Leah Clionsky: Maybe we just know it cognitively, right? We, it's, we just know it. In our minds we're like, we know that there's going to be this kind of transition, like Big sister is going to college and my child, my younger is going to struggle with this. We already know. Just by the fact that they are close, that that might be difficult.
[00:02:31] Leah Clionsky: Or sometimes we haven't thought about the fact that the situation might be stressful until we start seeing some big behaviors, like some temper tantrums and some pushback, and we're like, why is this happening? And then there we look at the situation, we're like, oh yeah, there's a big change that's already starting or that's about to come and my child's gonna need help processing this.
[00:02:55] Leah Clionsky: So that's what we're going to discuss is what do we do when that happens to us? Inevitably, right? This happens all the time to parents with children. And my favorite approach for these situations, both as a clinician when I'm working with kids in therapy and as a parent, is using storytelling to prepare kids for events and to process their emotions through a story.
[00:03:20] Leah Clionsky: So why can we use storytelling? To help kids. Well, human beings are social animals, and we have been using stories since the dawn of time to understand ourselves and other people and our world. We are all very attracted to stories. That's why all of our media. Is essentially stories. Even when we hang out with our friends, what we're usually doing is telling stories.
[00:03:48] Leah Clionsky: I'm gonna tell you the story about this thing that happened to me, and you're gonna tell me the story about the thing that happened to you, and we're gonna talk about each other's stories. Maybe we're gonna create a story together. We're gonna go on a trip together, and the entire time we're going to be telling ourselves a story about what's going on, right?
[00:04:04] Leah Clionsky: Stories are very important to people. One of the interesting things about stories is that often we can learn a lot from a story that is not about us. We can learn the most from stories that are very similar to situations that we're going through, but are not directly happening to us. So we have like enough distance from the situation not to feel personally attacked by the lesson in the story.
[00:04:30] Leah Clionsky: So we have some like plausible deniability, but it's close enough to what we're going through that we can take messages from it. And we have this happen to us all the time. Haven't you been in this situation? Maybe you're having a certain problem and then your friend tells you about a similar problem that they're having, and as you listen to them talk about their problem, you're like, oh, oh, that wasn't working out very well.
[00:04:54] Leah Clionsky: Or like, oh, that was really working. I should do that. Right? Like, you take that information. Maybe more information than you would take into your heart than if that person looked at you and instructed you on what you should do based upon their experience. So children are the same. Children learn a lot from stories and telling a child a story about a character that is going through something very similar to what they're going through gives them a safe place to think about how someone else might process the situation.
[00:05:28] Leah Clionsky: To ask questions that don't feel so personal, and also to take in information like coping strategies. Now I have to give you a caveat before we dive into more content in this episode. Here's the caveat. There is no evidence-based strategy. From like research that I'm about to teach you today, right? There is no manual that is like Dr.
[00:05:49] Leah Clionsky: Leah Clionsky storytelling with three randomized control trials showing it works, right? I'm just going to tell you about a clinical tool that I use frequently that I feel works pretty well, and you can take from it what you feel is helpful. But storytelling is also a modality used in therapy. There's an entire therapy called narrative therapy that basically is about the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves.
[00:06:13] Leah Clionsky: Change the way we view the world. So let me tell you a story about how we can use this strategy. Then I'm going to give you an example story, and then I am going to talk you through how to do this yourself. I'm not gonna use a real child though. I'm going to make up a child. So here is the situation.
[00:06:36] Leah Clionsky: Let's imagine that we want to help. A 5-year-old named Jacob. Jacob is turning six. Very soon. Now, another stressful thing is happening to Jacob. He's going to be starting first grade and one more stressful thing is happening to Jacob. And the third stressful thing is that his grandparents, who right now live two minutes away, are about to move.
[00:07:02] Leah Clionsky: 20 minutes away. So instead of seeing them every day after school like he normally does, he's gonna see them about once a week. Now all of these little things combined can be very stressful for a 6-year-old. So if we were only dealing with one of these situations, we might be able to use a story that already exists.
[00:07:24] Leah Clionsky: So, for example, there are many stories already out there in the world to prepare children for common situations. Like there are so many stories for how to prepare your child for the first day of school, for example. 'cause school anxiety is so common. So if you just turn on your TV to a children's show like Coco Melon or Daniel Tiger.
[00:07:46] Leah Clionsky: Or Sesame Street, or probably many, many others. There is definitely an episode about going to school, especially if it's the first day of school. I know this because when my daughter started going to pre-K, she was really anxious and we listened to Coco Mellons the first day of school song every single day for three months, and it really helped her out, right?
[00:08:07] Leah Clionsky: So these stories exist already. They're also probably about a million books. About, you know, Lama Lama goes to their first day of school, Elmo goes to his first day of school, right? So we could also consume it in that form. But what about this situation? This situation is more complicated. This situation isn't just about starting school.
[00:08:28] Leah Clionsky: This situation is also about a big birthday. So I know turning six might not seem like a big deal to us adults. We won't even say how many birthdays I have had, but when you are little, a lot of your identity is tied up in what age you are. It is the first question everybody asks you. And kids spend a lot of time talking about exactly what year they are.
[00:08:53] Leah Clionsky: So turning from five to six for some kids is a very big deal. It's like you are a new person, so hello Jacob. You are a new person who is going to be a first grader. You are also a new person who's about to be a 6-year-old, right? So those are really big changes for this kid. Now, the grandparent thing is also a really big change, even though logically you and I can say, well.
[00:09:17] Leah Clionsky: That's not that far, right? They were five minutes. Now they're moving 20 minutes. They're still around, they're still close. Maybe this isn't a big deal, but for some kids, that would be a really big deal, especially if they go from a primary caregiver that you're seeing every single day to someone that you're seeing once a week.
[00:09:34] Leah Clionsky: That is a big change, and all three of these changes all at once could be extremely stressful for the child that we've made up. And you as a parent, you know your child. So if you are Jacob's mom, you might say to yourself, I know Jacob very well. I know that these three things together are gonna be very, very hard for Jacob.
[00:09:56] Leah Clionsky: I know that they probably are gonna result in tantrums and I wanna prepare him for these emotional changes upfront. But there is no Coco Melon song and there is no book that has all these three things. And so that's when you get to make up a story and it's not that hard to do. I do it all the time. So I will tell you the story that I would make up for Jacob if I were Jacob's mom.
[00:10:23] Leah Clionsky: And I'll tell it to you as if Jacob were in the room and I was sharing it with him. And then afterwards I'll go through the different steps that I used to make up the story. So that you can do this yourself. So the very first step of making up the story is that I have to be aware of the situation, right?
[00:10:41] Leah Clionsky: I have to know what emotions Jacob is probably going to feel, right? I'm gonna make some guesses right now, just knowing that when kids have changes, they often feel anxious and scared and excited, and sometimes angry all at the same time. It makes sense. So I'm just gonna prepare 'cause I'm gonna highlight those emotions in this story.
[00:11:01] Leah Clionsky: So here is the story. Once upon a time, there was a little bear who lived in the woods with his mommy and daddy bear, and he was very happy. He got to play with his friends, the rabbits. He got to swim in the river and he got to eat. Yummy, yummy, blackberries. But one day Little Bear realized that there were some big changes that were happening in his family, and he started having a lot of feelings about them.
[00:11:32] Leah Clionsky: One of the new exciting changes is that Little Bear was about to have a big birthday and a big birthday party. When he thought about the birthday party, he felt very, very, very excited. But then he also felt a little nervous. I'm really used to being five. He thought being six seems a little bit different, so I feel a little nervous, but mostly excited.
[00:11:59] Leah Clionsky: On top of that, little Bear was about to start his first year at Big Bear School, and again, he felt really, really excited because he'd been looking forward to this for a very long time. But he also felt a little bit nervous. His tummy hurt a little bit when he thought about it. So he had a big birthday coming up.
[00:12:22] Leah Clionsky: He was about to start big kid bear school. And then a third thing was changing. And the third thing that was changing is that grandma and grandpa Bear, who used to live in the cave right next door, had to move to another part of the forest. And this made little bear pretty upset. He felt kind of sad about it.
[00:12:46] Leah Clionsky: And he also had some other feelings too. Hmm. I wonder what those other feelings could be. This is where Jacob jumps in. He was mad. Oh, he was also a little bit mad. He was mad because Jacob jumps in. Nobody asked him if they could leave. Yeah. That one makes someone pretty mad. Yep. So he was, he was mad and he was also sad, and that also made him a little worried.
[00:13:11] Leah Clionsky: Those were a lot of big changes, all all at the same time. Some of those changes were happy and exciting. Some of those changes made him a little sad and angry, you know, and mommy and daddy bear, they told little bear things are gonna be okay, everything's gonna be fine. But that was really hard for little bear to believe 'cause it tummy hurt a little bit whenever he thought about all of these changes.
[00:13:35] Leah Clionsky: So one day out of nowhere, little Bear started to feel so many big feelings. The feelings felt so big in his body that he started walking around going and he started tearing branches off of trees. 'cause he was a really strong little bear. And he was going G and tearing the branches off of trees. And he just felt so many feelings.
[00:14:02] Leah Clionsky: He didn't know what to do and he didn't know how to stop. That's when mommy bear realized that something was going on. So she said to Baby Bear, baby bear, why are you going G, G, G, and pulling the branches off trees? And little Bear said, I don't know. I don't know. And then Mommy bear said, oh. I think you're having a lot of big feelings.
[00:14:28] Leah Clionsky: I think this might be because of all the big changes. Maybe you're upset about the birthday party. Maybe you're upset about going to Big Bear School and maybe you're really, really worried about Grandma and Grandpa Bear moving far away. That makes sense. That's a lot of big feelings. And Little Bear said, yes, I have those feelings and I'm excited and I'm sad and I'm overwhelmed and I'm nervous.
[00:14:54] Leah Clionsky: GG and Mommy Bear said, yeah, I understand When I feel like that I need to take some deep, bare breaths. So I'm gonna breathe in really, really deeply and you can take them with me. And together Mommy Bear and Baby Bear took three deep breaths in through their nose like this and out through their mouth like this.
[00:15:29] Leah Clionsky: And then they did a third one won,
[00:15:35] Leah Clionsky: and then they started feeling so much better. And Mommy Bear said, you know. Little bear. I can see why all of these changes are hard. Maybe we need to get you a little teddy bear and you can hug your teddy bear when you feel all these big feelings. Would that help? And Little Bear said, yep, that would help me a lot.
[00:15:55] Leah Clionsky: So together, mommy Bear and Daddy Bear and Grandpa Bear and Grandma Bear all got him a special teddy bear. And they all gave it a kiss and a hug. And when Little Bear started feeling really overwhelmed by his big feelings, he would give his teddy bear a big hug and feel the love from his whole family.
[00:16:15] Leah Clionsky: And he knew that whenever he had his big feelings, he could talk to mommy bear and daddy bear and Grandpa Bear and Grandma bear about it. And he would feel a little bit better. And just knowing those things made it easier for the big changes to happen. The. And so see how this story went. So the first thing that we do, this formula to coming up with a story like this.
[00:16:41] Leah Clionsky: As I mentioned before is thinking a little bit, doing a little bit of planning about, okay, what is going on and what are the feelings that I wanna make sure we talk about? Okay. That's the first step. The second part is to make up a story very, very, very similar. To the situation that's going on with your child, right?
[00:17:01] Leah Clionsky: Like you can add some details if you want, you know, you can add some more reasons, you can add some flare. If that's your style, that's totally fine. That's where you get to be creative. You can add something funny if you want to, but you want the story to basically talk about the things that are going on, the things that your child is running into.
[00:17:20] Leah Clionsky: You want it to be clearly hitting the main points. So that's the second step. You're gonna retell the story. And the third step is you're gonna work in at least one strategy for managing feelings, and you don't have to get super creative. You know, in this story I added some deep breathing, which everybody kind of knows exists, right?
[00:17:40] Leah Clionsky: So some deep breathing and a comfort object. So that's it. I didn't have to make it super complicated. Those were the little strategies. It could have been as simple as just getting a hug from a family member or looking in the magic water to see grandma and grandpa bear every day, which could be like FaceTiming on your phone, right?
[00:18:00] Leah Clionsky: So you just wanna already think of like a strategy and work that into the story. So you think a little bit about what's going to happen and the main points that you wanna hit tell a very similar story. And work in a coping strategy. Kids are very, very open to this kind of storytelling and like they know that you are essentially telling them a story about themselves.
[00:18:24] Leah Clionsky: Like it's obvious they can see through it. You're not trying to hide that situation, but you're also not saying afterwards. Do you see how this is just like what happens to you? You can use these same strategies too, right? You're just gonna tell the story, allow it to unfold, and allow your child to sit with it.
[00:18:42] Leah Clionsky: And what you're really doing in the process of telling the story is you're validating and normalizing. You're helping the world make sense. One of the hard things about having big emotions, and this is true for adults, right? This is why adults are in therapy, is that it, it gets overwhelming and confusing and you're trying to make it make sense like.
[00:19:01] Leah Clionsky: Why am I feeling this way? Why am I acting this way? What's going on with me that this is coming out and what can I do about it? And so you are taking these situations and you're basically packaging them up really nicely for your child. And you're saying, here's what's going on with you. I think here is what makes sense.
[00:19:21] Leah Clionsky: And if you notice in the story, I left gaps, right? They're feeling. Pause, right? I want to allow that child to jump in, or, you know, if I were corrected by that child, I would go with it. So if I'm Jacob's mom and I'm, and I say he was feeling really excited and Jacob jumps in and says, no, he was feeling really upset.
[00:19:43] Leah Clionsky: I'm gonna say, oh, that's really interesting. So he wasn't excited. He was upset. Right. I like, I'm gonna go with that child's interpretation. 'cause part of what you're trying to do is open the door for that child to talk about their own feelings and afterwards they might just tell you, they could say, you know, that thing that happened a little bare reminds me about what's going on with me.
[00:20:05] Leah Clionsky: And I really am pretty sad that grandma and grandpa are moving far away. They're like, yeah, I can see how these two situations are similar. For my daughter, I made up a character named Baby Owl. That's what all of her stories are about. And one day she said to me, mommy, baby owl, and I have very, very same things happening to us a lot of the time.
[00:20:25] Leah Clionsky: It's kind of unusual. And I was like, yeah, isn't that interesting? Like you're opening a door, you're opening a communication for your child without sitting them down and saying, these changes are happening to you. How do you feel about them? Tell me about that right now. Which for some kids would work, but some kids, that's too intense.
[00:20:44] Leah Clionsky: So this is your way of kind of opening the door to that conversation, easing them in, and also forces you to kind of stop and think about what they might be feeling and thinking. You're not gonna upset them more by suggesting that they might have big feelings about these things. That's another thing parents worry about.
[00:21:02] Leah Clionsky: Well, what if they weren't gonna be upset, and now I suggest that they could be upset and suddenly they're upset. That's not how this works, right? Like most people are gonna have a. Big reaction to change. So it's not like you're introducing a new possibility that's never occurred to them. You're just normalizing it.
[00:21:18] Leah Clionsky: You're just helping them see that those reactions would make sense in context if it happens to them. And that's validation. We're gonna talk about validation and how to be validating in another episode, but that's what I'm leaving you with today. So if you feel like it's right for you. Try out this sort of storytelling.
[00:21:38] Leah Clionsky: It's fun. It can't go too wrong. It lets you connect with your child a little bit differently and you can absolutely make up these stories. I have a PhD in child psychology, but not in storytelling. You don't need an advanced degree for this. You can do this too. So I hope that you are having a fantastic day.
[00:21:57] Leah Clionsky: I hope that you have a wonderful week, and I hope to hang out with you again next time here at Educated Parent. Thanks again for spending time with me on Educated Parent, if this episode helped you feel more confident and handling those parenting curve balls. Hit follow. So you never miss an episode.
[00:22:17] Leah Clionsky: Know a parent who's stuck in the endless cycle of conflicting advice. Send this their way because we all deserve parenting strategies we can actually trust. And hey, if you have a minute, leave a review. Your support helps other parents find real expert back solutions instead of just another opinion online.
[00:22:37] Leah Clionsky: One last quick reminder. This podcast offers general advice, but every family is different. The advice offered in this podcast is not medical advice and is not appropriate for every family. If you need personalized parenting support, connect with an experienced clinician at Thriving Child Center or PCIT experts.
[00:22:58] Leah Clionsky: That's it for today. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.