Tips for Working with a Child Who Enjoys Change
Friends, Family and Home
- Encourage her to keep old friendships, as well as making new ones.
- Change family jobs around often.
- Try sitting at different places at dinner and varying routines.
- Make sure family members watch him carefully in new places and on shopping trips.
Learning, Childcare and School
- Ask the teacher to observe her for boredom and offer her new challenges often.
- Offer him different times and places to play and do activities when he seems tired of the same thing.
- Provide lots of chances to explore new things of interest to her through books, trips to museums, or nonfiction television shows.
- Alert the teacher that he needs occasional changes in routine and new experiences to learn best.
Activities and Television
- Provide field trips and activities to new places and opportunities to do new things.
- Watch travel shows, history or science programs on TV and talk about them.
- Give her new craft materials, kits and projects.
- Move babies from crib to floor and to different rooms often.
Guidance and Discipline
- Watch him carefully in crowds or in potentially dangerous situations.
- Change her chores and rewards often, and suggest to her new ways to complete routine tasks.
- Change his bedtime and meal routines occasionally – one night she can sleep in a sleeping bag or have dinner on the floor like a picnic.
- Give choices for required routines, such as which pajamas to wear and different bed sheets for bedtime.
Tips for Working with a Child Who Prefers the Familiar
Friends, Family and Home
- Help him make new friends by inviting a new child over to play.
- When pets die, a move or changes occur, spend a lot of time talking and reassuring her.
- Warn about changes in your home, such as redecorating, before it happens.
- For birthdays and other occasions, plan small celebrations.
- Maintain family routines as much as possible.
Learning, Childcare and School
- Introduce children to new schools and teachers slowly by visiting the new place often and staying extra the first few days of school.
- Let teachers know that he needs lots of notice to prepare for change.
- Ask teachers to let her and you know ahead of time if they are planning to rearrange rooms or have visitors or go on field trips.
Activities and Television
- Watch TV shows with him in which people go on trips or to new schools and discuss the stories with him.
- Play games where she has to make choices and change what she is doing, such as card games or role play games.
- Play “What If” games and ask, “What if we went to the zoo, what would be fun, what would be scary, what should we take?”
- Provide baby with a blanket or stuffed animal, and keep it with him when you go places.
Guidance and Discipline
- Talk frequently about upcoming changes, trips or new people.
- Describe a new experience, what it will be like and what to expect.
- Take a familiar object with you to new places.
- Offer choices and encourage her to try new things.
- When routines are temporarily upset, reassure him that things will return to normal soon.