This blog post was written 8/9/2020

Charlie was well prepared. He was told the previous evening of the upcoming visit to school. He was told this morning of the upcoming visit. He packed his own lunchbox and got himself ready = literally such an achievement in this house. And he was ready to go! However, anxiety started to rear it’s ugly head the minute we walked through the school gates. And when the teacher suggested we take a temperature as per covid-19 guidelines, he was off!!! Awful experience. The level of running off (other than Cornwall) has dropped dramatically so the fact he is now running off was devastating. We were unprepared for this, we did not know and I could not prepare him for this to help with the transition.

The compromise with the temperature check was that he holds the thermometer himself, and checks his own temperature or alternatively I can check it before he goes in. But we agreed on Charlie checking it himself. In the school we went, played on the swing, played a game of Minecraft Uno and that was enough. Charlie wanted to go. I stayed with him the whole time, purely because the separation anxiety would not of allowed for anything else.

We left after 45minutes. I felt like this was a small achievement. In fact any time within a school setting is an achievement. And after a 6.5 month break because of Covid-19 I do feel that it will be a slow consistent transition, that’s what it needs to be. So off we went, saw a lovely little Mercedes classic car on the way out. I think that made his day!!! Charlie has a soft spot for cars.

We decided on the next visit to be Thursday, so I will blog once again, more so that I can keep a record as it is handy when discussing issues with professionals, I then have something that I can refer to that is in the recent events. There are many many experiences that we have had in this journey that I wish I had been blogging for so that I can then refer back to the feelings, emotions, hardship and struggles and likewise as a tool to learn from these experiences so that we do not need to go through that again.

Speak to you on Thursday.

Georgina x