18 days ago
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Day 1 holiday meltdowns 🤯
7:30am Day 1 of school holidays and we’ve already had a meltdown. Poor Miss I struggles with the excitement of holidays and also the change of routine.
The struggle with excitement always makes my heart hurt for my girl. She’s got lots of things she’s requested this holidays, but she has challenges processing the feeling of excitement. This often results in a big meltdown before she can move onto enjoying the activity.
We have found she loves to know what’s happening in advance, so a visual calendar helps her. But we don’t go too far in advance (ie more than a few weeks) or it can cause the excitement meltdowns to escalate.
We’ve also noticed an increase of unsafe behaviours in the lead up to the holidays (eg trying to get out of a moving car with her carer and trying to climb into other peoples vans/cars in car parks), so needing to reinforce with her why her safety supports are there. Does anyone else’s child have increasing behaviours prior to holidays?
Deep breaths for our family this morning! Day 1 of 2.5 weeks of navigating school holidays
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Yes my little 6 year old son needs routine badly. I do normally make a calendar for him however I will now put on the picture of what we are doing each day. Thank you so much for the idea! Yes his behaviour increases during the holidays however we just keep structure to our day as much as possible. E. G. Leave the house the same time every morning even if it is just for a walk or a drive. I spent last night making up a school holiday program for both of my children
We have introduced a family meeting each morning during school holidays! F would struggle with the lack of routine and school holidays were always so hard. So now We sit down together and plan the day. Finn loves to have input and it means he gets to do some of the things he wants to do and I get to put some things in that I want to do. It isn’t always perfect but it sure has helped!
😞 it's so hard when the emotions get all confused! R gets more anxious & repetitive. Actually- they all get more anxious! We need a plan & plans don't always work here! We try set up 'days' of things not times. Lots more tears here already today.
We don’t have the meltdowns as much it’s more the over stimulation if we tell R we are doing something exciting, he won’t sleep or repetitive asking if when something is going to happen which then leads to anxiety, we just don’t tell him now unless need be, which then can lead to anxiety as well, so it’s a no win situation at times. Keep up the deep breathing!