Not coping with the school holidays

[Harryy]

My 5 year old has ASD, ODD and Anxiety and isn't coping with not going to school today. It's just been tears, tantrums and violet behaviour all morning. All because I said the school isn't open today.

He's been attacking his sisters he hit one around the head with a toy, both has been hit, pushed, jumped on!

How do you cope?

I feel your pain, we have already has three meltdowns this morning. Currently coping by watching the same song from Moana on repeat!

Luckily my dd is in nursery today so I'm not having to cope with sibling fights too.

Oh no. Here, lots and lots of warning, a holiday timetable sorted with input from DC, extra tablet time, and jigsaw puzzles in PJs for about 6 hours this morning before I contemplated asking him to do anything.

Also lucky here that other DC is older and spends a lot of time in her room. I've just sat doing puzzles with DS listening to his favourite CDs. It was much harder when he was your DS's age and needed more to occupy him.

Goodness only knows how tomorrow will go. I need to get him to childcare. Eek.

I try and prepare my dd in advance for school holidays. We make a list of stuff we can do in the holidays and make a timetable of when we are going to do it and I make sure it's stuck to.

Another who has to have the holidays timetabled.

We have come away for a few days and still have had to timetable the whole time!

We also do a timetable but also have a plan B list we use if for some reason we cannot stick to the time table. For example my son hates the rain so if we planned to go to the zoo but it is raining we pick something from the plan b list that could be something like, create a Lego town!

My Ds is 14 and likes to know about everything in advance, definitely no surprises. We use a white board timetable every week including school weeks, so it all gets written down on a Sunday evening.

He tends to be ok if it's on the timetable. Would not like it if I got a time wrong or we had to leave early for something. We find it works reasonably well but he is a teenager.

No advice, but you’re not alone 😭 just keep counting down the days until they are back school.

I was in tears today. We went out. DS lives going out BUT can’t behave in public, he never has. He does have autism but I do think some of his behaviour is just being a spoilt brat wanting his own way and it was awful. I just wish we could be a normal family!

Today was awful! He wanted to go in the garden this morning but it was raining and he didn't want to get any clothes on. He went off on one I don't think he's ever had a tantrums like todays ones. It took a good hour or more for him to fully calm down.

I don't do a timetable holidays we don't plan anything as things just happen

Sorry you've had such a difficult day. Can he tell you what he misses about school?

With my DS (and PPs' children by the look of it) it's primarily the routine, so anything that gives him a bit of structure back is a life raft. We had 3 different elements:

• stuff that happens in term time and is carried into the hols - music practice, dressing and bedtime routines, sandwiches on Wednesdays etc. All help ground him.
• holiday routines, that are the same every holiday, Eg a box of cocopops at the start of the holiday, swimming at some point. Help him look forward to holidays.
• one headline of what we will do each day, even if it's just go to the park or go to the CM.

This really doesn't tie us down that much, but it helps his anxiety a lot. Of course if your son is not worried by the lack of structure in holidays then it's not the right route. What does he miss about school? If it's maths could you build maths into the holidays? Or something about replicating break time with a daily trip to the park, or whatever else he misses. I know it can be hard to figure these things out of he can't tell you. Sometimes there is nothing you can do and you just have to try again tomorrow.