Christmas hols a diaster

[jogalong]

Our Christmas break is tuning into a disaster. Ds age 4 with asd just wants to go back to school. He asks me around 10 times per day "go school tomorrow".
His behaviour is terrible. Constantly fighting with his brother and sister, screaming around he house, head butting etc. The weather is too poor to take them outside. Maybe a soft play area today.
Its very hard when there is a change to routine.
Any suggestions on how to entertain would be great. Have no family around at moment so no help or support either

When Dd3 was younger I tried to pretty much stick to the routine. She would still get up early so we kept mealtimes and bedtimes the same or very similar.( In fact she is 11 now and we still work to a very similar routine. ) We tried to go out in the middle of the day and often took her lunch with us which she would eat in the buggy or in the car.

The only concession we made really was not rushing out to do the school run which she loved. As she has got older got has got easier. She loves the holidays now because it means no school. We still stick to the routine though.

It does always take a few days for her to chill when she breaks up and she can be very stressy during those days.

Do you use a visual timetable with your Ds? If you do with a bit of planning you can still use it in the holidays so he knows what is happening each day. Hopefully that will reduce his anxiety.

Good luck

Hi, I was also going to suggest you try a visual timetable. Perhaps if your DS knows exactly what he will be doing in a day it will help his anxiety levels.
Also we have invested in a decent rainsuit for our DS and try to make sure he gets a run out everyday unless it is completely torrential otherwise he is a bit like a caged animal!
Would something like an indoor trampoline (or trampoline tent for an outdoor trampoline) help with using up any excess energy?

I agree about the waterproofs, Aldi and Lidl often sell very reasonably priced waterproofs.

Get some for yourself too, it is horrid being outside in bad weather without the correct clothing but with it you dont really notice.

Parks and playgrounds are fab for children with Asd in rubbish weather.... No sharing required

ive often wondered if it would be easier if a child was going to a ss and the whole school approached holidays differently. It would be interesting to find out if that happens.

we have gone through (and still going through) the same thing.
The one thing that missed me this year was that ds was actually poorly but because he is largely non verbal - i missed the cues and just saw the aggression.
Now i'm addressing the head cold he is a lot better.

i usually start off a non school day saying "no school today just in daddys car"- thats the one BIG different thing we do on a non school day - and we've always done that (gone out in husbands car). Its a big visual cue for ds and help him understands that it must be a non school day if we are going out with daddy in his car!

But as said above, we keep routines pretty similar - snack dinner etc is all the same time. we even go out in the morning to do jobs as i get that ds needs and wants to be out and about. We do "jobs" and "outings" that we would only ever do on a non school day and at teh end of the day if its another non school day the next day i end the day saying the same thing.."no school tomorrow, daddys car again".