Leaving school is scary - how have you helped your teens through it?

[Wholebunchofthings]

DD is leaving high school to go to sixth form college, it's what she wants to do, some of her friends from school are going to the same college, and i think it will ultimately be fine BUT she's scared about the transition, understandably, and leaving behind the place and people she's known for the last five years.
How best to help her? When leaving primary for secondary, there seemed to be a lot of help and support from both schools, but this time the current school seem to be making it worse by trying to persuade her to stay on at school's 6th form, plus all the pressure of Leaving - yearbooks etc. Not to mention GCSEs!
Would love to hear other ppl's experiences and how you got through it.

....wonder if no responses means everyone else but us is handling it all perfectly....

Bump. I can't help with this as DS went straight thru in the same school. But I would imagine that most students will be in the same position so will band together? Also as she is older she can still keep easily in touch with her old friends. 2 sets of friends instead of one?
Hopefully someone else will come along with more help. Good luck.

Thanks Isthiscorrect! A lot of her friends are staying on at the school sixth form, just a small group going to college.
The friends who are staying are feeling wierd too because they are going through all the big Leaving School rituals, prom and all that - and then coming back in September!

My son is as stressed about leaving his school as he is about doing his GCSEs, it's not much fun in our house at the moment!
His school doesn't have an academic sixth form, it has a mainly vocational one, so he will go to one of the two local sixth forms. They won't make a definite offer until GCSE results are through. So not only is he leaving school but won't know exactly where he is going until mid August. He is quite sad about being the 'new boy' again and about not seeing some of his teachers again. I wish leaving didn't happen at the same time as the exams, but I know it has to.

My hopelessly disorganised moderately dyslexic DS1 moved to our localish 6 th form college, to do this he chamged from a 15 min walk across fields to the comp, to getting to a bus stop on time (we're all hopeless time keepers) and an hours journey. I doubt up until them he'd ever travelled on a bus more than twice in his whole life and certainly never alone! We just don't do buses.
It's the best decision he ever made, he's never missed the bus, only had 1 day of sick, he's made loads of friend and academically is doing so much better.
How did we manage the change? We didn't frankly I never thought about it or worried about it, I just pointed out the bus stop and let him get on with it. He rose beautifully to the challenge.

Mygrandchildrenrock - that sounds extremely stressful, in fact many adults would be stressed by that situation, so its gotta be even worse for a young person who's doing important exams as well. My DD is lucky that she has an offer of a place where she wants to go so there's no uncertainty about that. Once the exams are over i hope the new place will become more real and less scary.
Are some of your son's friends leaving as well, and do they have offers of a place at the sixth form he hopes to go to?
Is he able to talk about how he feels with his friends? My DD has had a few heart to heart chats with others at school this week, which she says has really helped her. She tends to keep her worries to herself at school usually , although she can and does talk to me about things.
There's such a lot to cope with all at the same time.
It's going to be a hard few weeks coming up.

Wholebunchofthings, some of his friends are staying at school, many are travelling quite a way (we're rural) to a large FE College but my son wants to go to one of the sixth forms at the Grammar schools. Some of his friends will be going to the one near his school (an hours bus journey) but we're not sure if anyone is going to the one nearer us (40 mins).
He's upstairs stomping around because he doesn't feel he's done enough revision this weekend. He has Asperger's and is a lovely lovely lad but there are times when life is so hard for him and therefore us, and this is one of those!

My DD2 changed school for 6th form and we did not "manage" it at all. If you have made a rational decision to leave, then you all have to stand by it and look forward to a happy 6th form at the College. My DD2 left a boarding school after GCSEs and we knew she was going 18 months before she left so it had been decided way before exams and no "proms" to worry about. About 38 other girls left the school at the same time as she did, which was highly unusual, but not a single one went to the school she transferred to. I don't actually think moving is such a big deal so long as you are positive about the move, are doing it for very sound reasons, and your child actually wants to do it. If they are stressed about it, is it the right decision?

Even doing things for the right reason can make children/adults stressed.
My son's school doesn't have an academic sixth form so he has to move, no choice about that.
He has been lovely and calm the last two night though!

Very true, mygrandchildren it's a big change not being at school, so much will change from big things like seeing different people every day instead of the old familiar faces, to little things like having to decide what to wear every day instead of just putting uniform on!
It's all very intense too, and teenagers do 'intense' very well
Even kids who have hated each other for years all love each other now!
We just keep things as normal as possible at home, nothing new or diferent, boring even but I think that helps when the outside world is changing so much for her.

DS is another who won't know till August where he's going, as the sixth form offers here are conditional on results. I don't think it helps that his brother is leaving school this term at the end of A-levels and doesn't know where he'll be next September either!

Well, if she's stressed about changing and doesn't have to why is she changing. If she's happy enough where she is to get stressed about moving and if they want her to stay why exactly is she moving?

I am not sure I understand the stressed and scary thing either. My DDs both went for a term to a South African school on a school exchange in year 9. We did not go with them. They travelled with another pupil and we put them on a plane, they changed planes at Jo'burg and were collected at the destination airport by someone they did not know. They spent three months in a school they did not know, doing subjects quite different from their school, and meeting many pupils, parents and teachers thousands of miles from home. THAT is what I think is a bit scary! It is also extremely positive and character building. It was fun and adventurous. Be positive about change and stop worrying about it. You have made the decisions so of course they will cope!

MMM one of my children went travelling round Africa at 18 for a year, another went to America to work at 18 for a year, my DS isn't like them and certainly won't be doing anything like that!
If it were simple enough to be positive about change for it to be stress free, life would be wonderful. I ooze positivity but have a son who does find change/transition stressful and if you have a child like it can be difficult to help them.
My Africa travelling child used to sit on my knee at toddler group over 33 yrs ago, with her coat on - refusing to take it off. I can remember the mums telling me not to mollycoddle her, make her take her coat off etc. and I used to think of that when she was gallivanting around thousands of miles from home!