Summer update

Amazing to think that we're nearly at the end of the first week of the Summer holidays already! Peter had a wonderful Frozen themed birthday at home playing with our friends and their children. We were impressed that he held it together all day and had great fun, although it did mean that there were a couple of days' fall out afterwards, and we ended up taking all his birthday presents away and drip-feeding them back over the next few weeks as he couldn't cope with all the change at once.

Peter found the last couple of weeks of school hard due to the changes in routine and the constant reminders of transition - saying goodbye to the leavers, having his "moving up" day with his new teacher and classmates for next year, talking about the holidays etc. and his anxiety has been coming out at home in regressed behaviours which haven't yet calmed down.

The holidays are also hard for Peter in different ways. We have lots of lovely fun activities planned as well as down time at home, but we also have high expectations of him in terms of his behaviour, tidying up, finishing tasks and learning to do things for himself. It's nothing he's not capable of, but it's extremely tiring and frustrating for him to listen, focus and stay on task so he's been trying every trick in the book to get out of doing whatever we've asked him to do!

Peter's just started Occupational Therapy and we're learning tips to help him improve his fine motor skills at home. We've come to suspect that school are not placing any demands on Peter or trying to teach him much at all as yet, which is such a shame. He's keen to learn, he just needs someone with him to help him focus. He's made huge progress with his language, but at the end of Reception year he didn't know which end of a Pritt stick was which, no one has attempted to correct his "whole fist" pencil grip, and we've eyed most of the art folder that came home with some suspicion as it looked more like the work of a TA!

Even with all the anxiety and regression, Peter is still doing fantastically. We started very casually potty training at the start of the holidays and he loves all the praise and chocolate buttons although isn't yet able to tell us before he needs to go. It will come. He can get dressed pretty much independently now and is working on being able to put his own shoes on. He's mastered opening and closing screw-top lids and is completing 50 piece puzzles. We're excited to see how much progress he makes by the time school starts again in September!