My 4 year old son currently attends a childminder with 6 other kids aged between 3 months and 4 years. He starts school in September.
Over the last 6-8 weeks he seems to have really regressed! It started with him getting tearful again on the journey when it was “childminder day” and not wanting to go. Then he’s stopped wanting to join in at his rugby class - he’s been doing this for a year and I’ve always found it good for him as he’s in a bigger group with children his own age, he’s always loved going and was one of the more confident kids in the group - suddenly one week he’s refused to leave my side and won’t join in with any of the games or activities, that was about 6 weeks ago now with no improvement- I’ve carried on taking him because it’s routine and I want him to do an activity with a larger group of children to help prepare him for school. We’ve just come back from a family holiday and since we’ve returned he’s now crying if we leave him with grandparents (who he’s always absolutely loved spending time with) and I’ve now had a few occasions where he’s been clinging onto me begging me not to leave him - grandparents and childminder. As well as this he’s stopped getting himself dressed, doing his teeth, eating proper meals and he just seems to be constantly poorly - we must have had about 4 lots of viral temperatures in the past 6 weeks that have gone on for a few days.
He’s now started getting anxious about playing with his “best friends” and if something has upset him, he refuses to talk and tell us what’s the matter - then will have a massive melt down - an example being the other day he left our friends house screaming- when he eventually did calm down, he said he was upset because he wanted another drink….
I’m at a complete loss with what to do, and I’m really starting to struggle. It’s exhausting- I honestly feel like I have an 18 month old again. I’m really worried about how he’s going to cope at school if he’s still like this. My head says the obvious answer is it’s him processing the changes that are coming up in September- I try to talk to him about school and reassure him - some days he doesn’t want to talk about it and will change the subject, others we can have a nice little chat about all of the fun and exciting things he’s going to be doing. Any advice from anyone who’s been through a similar situation would be massively appreciated! Thanks 😊