Reception woes and behaviour

[Ozzyskye]

My little boy is 5 in June and started reception last September. He's an only child and has come from a small nursery of about 12 kids to reception with 60 in the year (2 classes if 30). Initially he was doing quite well but things seem to have gone wrong over the past few months.

• listening and acting out has been an issue, he will refuse to listen/mess around and need removing from class at times

• he will have emotional "meltdowns" and will cry or go to hit out if for example someone walks past him and knocks him - he's very good at apologising if he does it but with someone else he doesn't accept it's not on purpose.

• there's another little boy who he has an intense love hate relationship - they're best buddies but wind eachother up until it's too much or they egg eachother on with messing around and disrupting the class.

• he does have other friends which I've encouraged but seems to latch on to a child very strongly and becomes very possessive. He's got a friend he has done this with and the friend is feeling very overwhelmed that my D's doesn't allow them to play with other children and it's not fair for them.

At home, Ds is entirely different. He's an only child so obviously gets a lot of one on one but he can play happily by himself too. We don't see meltdowns beyond usual 4 year old fast resolving frustrations. Dh and I have a great relationship and ds has a strong secure attachment to us both. We have boundaries in place but do pick battles and don't give in to every whim, and talk about emotions and feelings. Ds is very good academically but emotional intelligence has always been a bit slower to catch up. There are no additional needs.

Some of the above I think is normal behaviour given age. School have been good with communication and have started a book of how the days gone so that he and I can discuss (I emphasise he's not in trouble it's just so we can see where things have been difficult for him and try to help him with this) and they've started encouraging him to go and have some calm down time if he's getting upset or messing around. He always has a "reason" for behaviour, which of course i take with a heavy pinch of salt, but discuss other things that he could do to make better choices.

I don't know what else i can do and I suppose I wanted some reassurance from parents whose children have been similar! Part of me thinks it's a waiting game for his emotional maturity to develop but I don't want him to be seen as the naughty child or for children not to want to be his friend in the mean time. He's a lovely boy, clever, funny, confident and a little bit cheeky and it's painful to hear that the whole world don't necessarily get to see that.

Haven't had a chance to read all the posts but sounds a bit like our son, struggles from the start, and we took him to the GP in the end although we didn't honestly think he matched with ASD or ADHD. She said he's not showing any worrying signs but said it sounds like he's a highly sensitive child which is not something that's diagnosable but recommended some books eg the explosive child and a couple of others I can dig out.
The description although it's not an official disorder really hits home and it's matching him pretty closely, it turned out some of our ways of dealing with were the recommended ones anyway.
In the end he's his own person so all we can do is support him as best we can.
Good luck!

That’s a good update OP, it sounds like your DS’ school is really supportive with what they’ve put in place. Fingers crossed for a peaceful year for him!

Great update!

How is he getting on? Omg I'm so glad I found this post. We are a year behind you as in my May boy is currently in reception in 2024 and he sounds almost identical. Just about to go in for our first chat about it.

He doesn't lash out or hit but just gets very emotional at school if someone isn't playing with him or if he doesn't want to do something. He had a glowing report with consistently good behaviour from second term up to Easter but post Easter he has regressed and been very emotional. That has followed lots of changes at home and illness so that may be playing a part.

Anyway younger boys in the class who are only children surely have different emotional capacity. Not sure how much this is recognised.

I hope he will be ok and hope things are improving for yours. I do worry about labelling him so young and over focusing on his behaviour as that might actually make it worse. A quiet room sounds a fabulous idea!!

@Sumshinebound apologies I didn't see this sooner.
Its so tricky to determine what's "normal" and what's not in kids of this age isn't it? I hope your school is as supportive as ours has been, it's made such a difference! I think the key things are trying to work out triggers, distraction and interventions to avoid upset.

Things are pretty good here, ds had a brilliant parents evening and has been getting on well with the sticker chart - teacher has made it a bit harder for him to get whole stickers to challenge him a bit and we do generally get at least 7/9 stickers. I have been very clear to reinforce to him that even if he got no stickers one day, if he had tried his hardest I'd be proud of him - he's very sensitive to criticism.

PE is particularly hard for ds as he gets frustrated at not winning or if he can't do X y or z as well as he wants to, and he still gets upset/frustrated when he perceives that something is unfair or injust (ie: another child cheating at a game, or saying ds was the one to shout out when he wasn't...) but I also think that's in keeping with a lot of nearly 6 year olds

at home he calms down much quicker and at school they're seeing a good improvement too. We did have one episode of hitting another child a few months ago (that there was a clear trigger for obviously that's not the point) but otherwise that seems to have stopped (touch wood).
He still uses his ear defenders if things are too loud - apparently they're a very noisy class! And this works well. He never uses them outside of school mind.

Ultimately, I think he is still a child with big feelings when it comes to anger or frustration and we're still working on that, but in many ways he's made such progress and I'm so proud of him (and importantly, he can name things he is proud of when asked, sometimes spontaneously bringing it up).

Otherwise, he's a really kind, caring kiddo, very popular and makes friends easily and is genuinely a really interesting and engaging child to talk to. Ds, me and Dh have a lot of fun together, it's a lovely little team we have.

Great to hear!! So glad things improving for you. My boy sounds so so similar. Wow.

They are putting things in place similar to yours. Not yet ear defenders but perhaps that will come. Fingers crossed things improve xx

Great update OP! That's lovely to hear. My son sounds very similar. He has recently been diagnosed with ADHD and autism actually (but there are a couple or other signs like stimming in my son that makes neurodivergence more obvious). He used to lash out but has been calmer lately and is doing well. I agree that it's the way the school handles is that makes the difference. Good luck to us all!