Parent-Child Relationships

At school they have like a station where they can make a postcard and then you put it in an envelope and then they write the name of the person it's for and I'll get like four or five of these a day from him. And then inside it's like a really detailed complicated picture of something really weird like a floorplan of a house, or a scene where someone's trying - like I had one today where someone was trying to steal some milk um which is really odd.

As a family, we really, really struggled with his behaviour for the first term maybe, term and a half. I think he was just exhausted after school and on the days that he was in breakfast and after school club his there from eight till six. So, it's a long day. He's started doing after-school clubs as well, so he does you know, all the different activities. So, he comes home absolutely exhausted and it's horrible! And it took us a long time to kind of realise that he wasn't the same kid who wanted to come home and was really excited to see us and wanted to play or we had at home all day when he wasn't at school and he just wanted to play all day. So, he'd come home and I think we were, because I was missing him, I was trying to do too much with him. And actually, he just wanted to sit and do nothing, he'd been good all day you know, for the teacher and he'd listened all day and he'd done whatever he was told all day, and he actually just wanted nothing. And it took me and probably my husband as well a good, good term and a half to realise actually, I don't, so his behaviour was becoming pretty awful in the evenings, and his teacher was saying there's nothing like that at home, and it took us a while to realise actually perhaps we're expecting him to do too much. So we've now kind of changed it that he comes in, he reads his homework book, and then he can just sit and chill on his tablet or watch a film and he doesn't have to, you know I'd get home and there'd be activities set up and actually, he was just throwing the stuff all around.

I think we have a really good relationship. He talks to us - me and my husband - kind of very easily. Doesn't always tell us what he does at school, his favourite thing is to tell us about is what he had for dessert… But he will tell us you know if he's got a problem or if he's worried about something, he will come to us and we'll have a chat about it.