The month of September has come again with the back-to-school ritual. Summer holidays are over.

September has always felt like the start of another year, more so than January. January really comes at mid-year after the holiday season break.

There is energy and excitement in the air as the casualness of summer transforms rather abruptly into the process and structure of another school year. January usually means simply that school renews again, routines well established, after a short and indulgent reprieve.

September is also a kind of universal birthday for all children regardless of their actual birthdates. It is a poignant reminder to parents and grandparents that their children are now truly a year older.

This seems especially true as children pass through the traditional educational chapters, from kindergarten to elementary school, to junior and senior high school, and on to university and potentially graduate school.

The chapters make a story of increasing independence and competence, usually at a more rapid rate in the mind of children than as seen by parents. Each chapter is a push-pull time by parents and children as they sort out the balance of dependence and autonomy in their relationship. What has gone on before is history, particularly in the minds of children; no matter how nostalgic are their parents.

The transition or “transitioning” (the trendy and annoying habit of changing nouns in present progressive tense verbs) from elementary to junior high school is particularly noteworthy. It parallels the chronological passage from pre-teen to adolescence where dependence and autonomy are clearly and intensely at odds.

The teenager has been described as a two-headed being. The devoted child can turn on a dime into a fit of dramatic dislike that leaves parents reeling emotionally. Teens live primarily in the moment. Parents are often either all good or all bad depending upon how well they align themselves with their children’s wishes in that moment.

Junior high school also means leaving the security of six years of elementary school with essentially the same cohort of friends in familiar surroundings. The change of school locale for junior high means that every child entering Grade 7 will be part of a community of new kids on the block. For the first time in their young lives, children experience, understand and can speak about the anxiety of stepping into a significant unknown.

I know this from my own school memories that remain vivid, as a parent, from observations of our senior grand daughter and descriptions by friends with children of that age, as well as having worked professionally with teens and their parents.

This may the last vestige of children feeling totally dependent on their caregivers as a way to cope with the feelings of insecurity they are experiencing. Ironically, it leads to the fastest reversal in parent-child relationships to one of parent dismissal once they discover the world of peers on the path to independence in the first hours of classes. What a difference a day makes! Grade 7 teens quickly form a parallel universe in the human race that avoids contact with their suddenly alien elders.

Our next grand daughter is in her final elementary school year. We have one more year of regular contact with her before that pre-junior high school relationship becomes history. It is already a transition in progress.