Hey - new here and hoping for some guidance. My little boy whose now 6.5 had a really tough year at school last year, with meltdowns several times a day when he was throwing chairs, being violent and having to be removed into a 'calm down room'. We would also see this behaviour at home, alongside other concerns such as he developed physical and verbal tics, he still has problems toileting, he struggles completing tasks and zones out when in conversation.
These continued over the summer with us and we decided to ask for a referral, we had the details back and it was 4 years locally for CAMHS and 2 years for the recommended right to choose provider. So we decided to pay the £3K for the private referral, which we really didn't have but didn't want him to absolutely hate school by the time he got more support, and it just felt like it couldn't continue with him being lifted out of the classroom multiple times a day to kick off in what was essentially an empty cupboard.
However this year so far has been like night and day, he's only had a handful of meltdowns at home and school. He's still having problems toileting and zoning out, but seems to be a lot more settled. We've only had one serious meltdown at home, which was when he was already a little unsettled and he found his sister's leggings in his drawer and because they weren't in the right place this led to about 45 minutes of screaming, throwing items and rolling around on the floor.
I don't know if we jumped the gun on the assessment or if we're better at managing him, for instance we've introduced an hour long bath every evening for him which seems to really settle him and help with his very poor sleep.
Would really value any wisdom!