We spent the weekend away seeing family (grandparents). The children love their grandparents and had been really looking forward to seeing them given that due to many different circumstances it had meant we hadn’t seen them in about six months. The week before we went was hard, the children found it very difficult to regulate their emotions. We had meltdowns, we had arguments, we had snarkiness and hyperactivity. I spend this time trying to provide lots of sensory activities and keeping the children active so they can run/burn off the excess nervous energy.
The beginning of the weekend actually went a lot better than usual and we had been there around 24 hours before we had our first meltdown (for us this is a testament to home education and the lack of anxiety a normal school week would usually have brought). After this the anxiety began to escalate, the meltdowns from both children were more frequent, the snarkiness was more intense and the children could only play with each other for around 5 minutes before hell ensued.
Did they still enjoy the visit? For them yes but it was filled with anxiety. They were away from the safety of their own home and routine. There was an element of the unknown here, what game would we play, would we go for a walk? There was the knowing that at some point we have to return home, which although they are looking forward to due to the safety, they love being here in their own way and don’t want to leave their grandparents.
I tried my best to prepare for some of these eventualities. I brought along some small lego kits which always calm the children’s minds. I provided a new toy that the children hadn’t seen before, a geometric shape design building toy, and a couple of hole punches with coloured paper, this kept Riley occupied for ages (as expected) and calmed him when he was becoming dysregulated.
It is hard work for us carers to step out of our comfort zones but I feel (personal preference) that for us, the children need to be pushed from time to time and they really enjoy the visits to their grandparents, so for us it is a case of benefits vs risks and this is a benefits wins but my goodness it is exhausting keeping them emotionally stable.
Will we go away again? Yep every time. We will just make sure we have our sensory bag of gadgets, toys and distractions in our arsenal.
Update: We have been home a week at this point and are still having major fall out from our time away. Riley has been unable to self regulate and we are having multiple meltdowns a day with him. As always it will take time and patience to settle back into being at home and come down from the sensory experience of being away. We are having at least a week to ourselves away from other people with lots of sensory play and down time. Riley especially is currently needing a lot of extra support in day to day tasks like getting dressed and eating. We have had talk of self harming and suicide again. So we are having lots of cuddles, easy play and time together. It is hard and we could just stay at home but the children would never get the experiences of actual life, they would never see the people they love and they wouldn’t get to have fun outside of the house. Yes it comes with anxiety and a serious amount of fall out but we as their carers learn to manage this and support them both during and after the fact. It is just how we live our life.
