After the dust has settled.

Now that the dust has settled I can reflect on a much better holiday period than we have managed before.

I think we can attribute our successes to the following:

1) lighten up on food

We let them eat their advent chocolate straight after finishing breakfast and were less strict on Christmas Day etc about what they ate and when. It is only for one day so they had what they wanted on their plates and the only rule was that if they took it from the serving dish then they had to eat it unless they didn't like it. Some meals didn't even happen - they were asked if they wanted something to eat and if the answer was 'just a biscuit; then that it what they got especially when larger meals had already been eaten.

2) Alternate activity days.

One day out, one day of calmer things so they were taken bowling, to a theme park, to a soft play centre but never 2 days in a row. We broke activities up with at home days of craft activities and things in the garden. Doing thank you letters, going on bug hunts and colouring in are great quiet activities that seem to work for us.

3) Keep the bed time routine as much as possible.

We have worked out that routines are the backbone of coping and it is when the normal routines are gone that havoc ensues. It also worked during the day. Instead of asking them to go catch up on sleep we let them take their brains out in front of a film on the sofa or had some long story times.

4) Let them find their own space.

I think sometimes I expect too much of them, especially when there are people everywhere and things are a little bit different so this holiday I let them have extra time on their tablets, I let them them run around the garden when it was reasonably practical for me to let them do so, I let them be alone when they wanted to be and gave them one to one time when they asked for it.

It does feel like that they have a better idea of what to expect so there was a lot less anxiety surrounding what was going on around them.
Hopefully next year will be even better!

Epic

That is the only word that I can use for the tantrum that we faced last night, It has to be the worst we have seen in the 3 years that the smalls have been with us.

The frustrating thing is that it could have come from a number of things or nothing at all.

It seemed to start when we declared time on Wii games because he was getting really frustrated but there was a minor paddy when he did his spellings and he got 7 out of 8 (still a great score as they were hard spellings). It continued because he couldn't decide what story he wanted and escalated because he didn't get the CD story he wanted either. The screaming (full on proper screaming) started. No tears but stamping, shouting, growling, running up and down the stairs, door slamming and throwing himself about went with it. We decided to approach this calmly and returned him to his bedroom each time saying we will talk to you when you calm down. This ended up with him pinching, slapping, pushing and trying to bite us. We were told to 'go away'. 'leave me alone'. At one point he even tried to push us down the stairs. It took him a full hour to dissolve into floods of tears and then calm down enough to listen to us, to accept a cuddle and them to settle down in his bed for sleep.

In the cold light of day I can add things to the list of things that might have unsettled him enough for last nights tantrum - his sister is having her friend for tea tomorrow, he started Beavers last week and he started play therapy on Monday. It could be too much all at once, But it could have been something at school or nothing at all except being tired. At the end of the day we have to set down boundaries that include tantrums are not the way to get what you want. We are trying to let the little things go, to give him choices and allowing him to make decisions but I am starting to question whether we are doing the right thing.

In other news we are returning to our house move plan - we are getting back on the market and hoping for a buyer so we can find a bigger property with 2 essential additions - another bedroom so that the smalls can both have a big room and there is no jealous because one has a bigger room than the other and a second bathroom so I can have a shower in peace. Fingers crossed.