Sweet fillings

I've been thinking about how to minimise our tricky behaviours especially after school and at the weekends. This has meant a backward step or two for me personally, a return back to those first days when I had to be on hand tso manage those late afternoon, early evening witching hours and at the weekends to be in a 24/7 supervisory mode. I am now ensuring that dinner is prepared before I do the school pick up, on work days I prepare stuff in the slow cooker or go for simple pasta bakes when I get up in the morning. Mornings are good, child 4 wakes early but is happy to potter, eat breakfast, watch a bit of CBeebies or play with some toys. Other days I make it whilst the children are in school. This seems to alleviate the agression after school as I am more available, I can cuddle up on the sofa with child 3 & 4 or we can play, read, paint or bake. The hair pulling, the throwing and the hitting have begun to disappate. At the weekends we have to be more structured as the days are long without school.
We have been having our neighbours children over for an hour or so most Saturday mornings the last few weeks and I have found that structuring their time has been the best way to manage them. We have made biscuits, on Halloween weekend we iced ginger bread men shaped biscuits into skeletons and on Firework night we made edible sparklers by dipping breadsticks firstly into melted chocolate then a variety of cake toppings, such as 100's and 1000's, glittery sugar and chocolate sugar strands.
I've extended this to cover much of the day through Saturday and Sunday, not just baking just more structure and it is working slowly. Yesterday went extremely well, especially as Mr L and child 2 had headed off to watch the football 3 hours away. We made Christmas shaped bird seed cakes, did a bit of shopping, made lunch, went to a party, went for a walk and played in the bath.

Today was a little trickier probably because after lunch with my parents we relaxed on the sofa to watch Babe, child 4 isn't quite ready for a 90 minute movie, he soon became restless and looked for ways to annoy his siblings, very successfully. Now he is asleep in bed and I am finishing off my blog before checking out Pinterest for new ideas for activities!!!!

This mornings creation - White chocolate cookies. We also made our Christmas Cakes.  Busy busy busy hands mean less chance of trouble maker hands.

The end of the school honeymoon

This week meant a follow up meeting in school, to see how child 4 was settling in. Child 4 has settled in well, there are no concerns regarding his academic ability and he loves forest school and PE. However, he is hurting someone every single day. I was hoping that his agression and sometimes violent action remained within the home and I was saddened if not surprised that my hopes had not completely come to fruition.  In reality since half term we have been struggling with many difficult behaviours, it's quite exhausting, days that easily spill into anger, rage and fighting, evenings of clingy battles against sleep and a move from when safety was in sleep to a need from him to end up in our bed. A need to feel secure and loved despite or because of his behaviour earlier in the day.

The school are being amazing, they are planning to add yoga to help with his anger and a social behaviour learning scheme using stories in school, supported with stories at home with additional ELSA support in school, they will also look at an additional staff member to help support within the class as child 4 cannot cope without an adult presence, the minute he is left to his own devices especially in free flow play or playtime something will happen. Hopefully as his days become more structured he will feel more secure and his behaviour will calm down. He has build a strong and respectful relationship with his teacher to the degree that sometimes if he feels unable to cope he will find her and stay close to her until he feels safe again.

At home Mr L and I are going to do a Conscious Parenting course, I did one three years ago when child 4 arrived but of course he was 2 then, now at 5 things have changed and evolved and I could do with a reminder and some new ideas in managing some of the more difficult behaviours that seem to be exhibited more and more often.

All this left me a little despondent for a while, in so many ways we have made so much progress, then something reminds us that life is not plain sailing I am just so grateful that we have such a good relationship with the school and that they are willing to put huge amounts of support in place when it is required. Also with our post adoption team who have already found places on courses for us to attend, Mr L this month and me early next year.

I often wish that I had a magic wand and some magic spells to fix it all, but that I guess would be too easy.