101 Healing Stories for Kids and Teens

and he’s left me looking forward to something. He has promised to drive up to my office and show
me his new car when he gets it.

STORY 87

FACING CHANGES

Therapeutic Characteristics

Problems Addressed

■ Facing changes

■ Adjustment issues

■ New challenges

■ Forgetting your capabilities

Resources Developed

■ Remembering your capabilities

■ Choosing to change what you can

■ Looking for the positives

■ Learning how thoughts can determine feelings

■ Knowing you need to do something only once to do it again

Outcomes Offered

■ Mindfulness of capabilities
■ Utilization of past abilities
■ Choices
■ Confidence in capabilities
Do you remember your first day at school? Some kids can’t wait to get to school for the first time.
Some find it scary and don’t want to go at all. Some kids don’t want to leave their moms at the school
gate. Seeing all those strange, big kids in the playground can be frightening, and the teachers may talk
in loud, stern voices—but for most of us, going to school is something that we have to do whether
we like it or not. How we feel about it, though, is something about which we do have a choice.
If Alicia remembered her first day at elementary school she would probably recall a lot of those
scary feelings. At the time of our story, however, she has grown to be one of the big kids. She knows
everyone in her class and many of the kids in other classes, and has lots of friends. She knows the
teachers, plays sports, and doesn’t think about what that first day felt like.
Now that is ending. Alicia is about to start high school. Again, her mother will drop her at the
gate of a new school and say goodbye while Alicia steps into an unfamiliar schoolyard with a lot of
kids she doesn’t know and teachers she has yet to meet. Again she will be one of the little kids. How
will she cope?
In elementary school she felt accepted, even important. She had gone from the bottom to the
top of the school. Anyone who could see what was happening to Alicia now might want to say, “Hey,

MANAGING CHALLENGES

Managing Life’s Challenging Times 203