Planning, Praise and Pride

As I've learnt to anticipate meltdowns and avoid them we rarely see them any more. This is great news for me, I'm getting to understand situations and circumstances that might overexcite, overtire, overwhelm our son and manage them. It means he still gets to do all the stuff we would normally do but we anticipate problems well in advance, plan for them and hopefully avoid them. It doubles the workload of a normal family outing but is always worth it in the end. However,when we go through long periods of time with success I forget to do the basic stuff that our son needs to stay on top of his every day emotions. I'm guilty of that at the moment and it caught up on me yesterday. I strongly believe that a happy child is an achieving child and over the last two weeks I've had the feeling that somethings just not quite right. It wasn't manifesting itself in the old explosive way but I just felt uneasy. Things at school were ticking over but my son wasn't proud of his work and was coming home complaining of 'always being on a warning'. This should rung warning bells, when he feels like he isn't doing well at something it more often that not turns into a self fulfilling prophecy and he gets worse and worse until he does explode. Two weeks ago I should have gone into his classroom and admired his work, rejoiced in his successes and made him feel like an achiever, I should have done it every day for a week until he came bouncing out of school bursting to tell me about some little thing he had done that day that he was proud of. Instead I got nervous and worried and did nothing, I hoped it would pass and that he would pull himself together. The result, a HUGE meltdown in school yesterday. Dealt with magnificently by his class teacher but sad because I know it should have been avoided. Having had a meltdown he now feels like a failure and I've a mammoth task to get him to believe in himself again. As my Mum always says 'little and often' (although that is about staying on top of housework). The moment I struggle to find something to praise him for and find myself sighing because he has had another bad day at school I need to take action. Spirited children don't give you a moment to sit back and relax, every day is like planning for that outing.