Friday, July 29, 2011

One week down....

The summer holiday madness has begun.  We survived the first week with at least some of my sanity still intact (although maybe I should ask for a second opinion just to be on the safe side?)

Normally the school holidays are a quiet time for business, I don't know what's changed but things have certainly stepped up a gear over the last week!  Which is fantastic, we're still managing to get most orders out the same day and we still get time to take the Moonkids out for days out.  I just wish the weather was a bit better but you can't have everything I suppose.

But there's no getting away from the fact that the school holidays are tough on families.  I'm lucky this year, I have MoonDaddy at home to help out but many Mums aren't so lucky.  Especially the Mum's of kids with Autism.  Children with Autism crave routine in the same way plants do sunlight, they struggle to function without it.  At school, everything is regimented.  Everything happens at the same time every day, they know their routine and what's going to happen next.

But come the school holidays, this whole system breaks down and it places an enormous strain on everyone in the family.  Again, we're lucky - Moonchild the Elder copes reasonably well as long as he's entertained virtually all the time.  He's even better if we're out and about a lot but that's not always reasonably possible.  Other families are not so lucky, they have many more meltdowns to contend with and no support or respite until the school's go back.

Then you have all the working parents who have to arrange childcare.  We went to the zoo today, which was being frequented by an army of grandparents with small children in tow!

Maybe it's time to change the way school holidays are dished out?  The summer holidays were originally so long so that the kids could work on the farms and help out with the harvest.  Which I think I could safely assume is no longer the case, so why instead don't they change it?  A shorter summer holiday and maybe make the half term holidays 2 weeks instead? 

It might be the same amount of holidays but they would be more spread out.  Facing a fortnight's holiday is far less daunting than 6 weeks!

On the flip side, Moonchild the Elder starts Reception Class in September, so a part of me is enjoying spending some time with him before he starts big school.  He on the other hand, wants to start right away and tries to put on his new school uniform virtually every morning!  I wonder if he'll be quite so keen a few weeks in?

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