How do you help him deal with his upset and the transitions?

I say this because I have a similar boy and we have to give a good lead-in to transitions, make new things normal by stories etc at home before hand (and he was just signed up to the local scouting group - that wasn't optional!), say that it's OK to be upset. He still misses my old car too and talks about Victor (which was odd, as Victor was my commuting car so he was rarely in him). We had 15 minutes of tears when Patrick left Strictly Come Dancing. He's been in tears about someone in his class saying that he likes tomatoes when he doesn't and won't stop going on at him about it. He refuses to do sport clubs or music lessons - he did do French for a year but found it too easy so started messing around and was asked to leave the class: I am still furious about that, months later!

I give lots of reassurance, sometimes have a cry with him to show that it's OK (he has ended up crying about crying before) and long, long lead-ins. His school is changing next year (moving up a school) and we've already been for visits and discussed with the next head the month-long transition period. His school (this one and the next) are really big on proper transitions with lots of meeting the new teacher, new classroom and even the new school so they are settled. We've also arranged visits to the new after-school club, not that he may be using it next academic year.

We don't celebrate new year, but have done Jesus' Birthday. DS likes singing Happy Birthday and so we get that a lot between Christmas and New Year. So Jesus is 2014 years old and Liebling thinks that is hilarious because it's so old.

When he tells me about things people say/do at school we talk about his responses and what outcomes he would like. And sometimes it is just telling the teacher that people are upsetting him when they won't stop saying things that don't fit his reality.

So yes, I would say normal and this is how I work his normality into our lives.