Do you feel the stress during the holiday season? We sure do. This week’s post will give you some tips on how to have a great holiday season with your autistic loved ones. From decorating to scheduling fun holiday activities, we discuss surviving and thriving Christmas and autism. If you need a quick gift idea for a loved one, check out our DIY taco seasoning mix. It is beautiful in layers in a small mason jar and makes and great and easy gift. Here is the link.https://faithhealthautism.com/category/food-from-scratch/. We are all about surviving and thriving over here.
Decorating for Christmas
Heads up! This can also apply to other holidays typically celebrated this time of year. But Christmas is the most popular holiday and the one our family celebrates.
First of all, you can have a great holiday season even when you have to adapt to autistic personalities and quirks. We have learned this over the years. The first item I would like to address are decorations. Most of the time when you have autistic individuals around like our active boys, you really need to focus on item for your decor that actually bring you joy.
This is probably not the season in your life to bring out the 100 year old heirloom Christmas ornaments that you inherited from your Grandma. Allowing your loved ones to participate at their level will really boost the excitement of the season and help them “catch the Christmas spirit”. At our house we do have a few special ornaments that we put at the top of the tree, but we mostly have soft ornaments that don’t break if dropped or “ahem” are rearranged 45 times.
Tip #1
To survive and thrive Christmas and autism, you should know that most austitic individuals are very sensory seeking, Translated to Christmas language you need to know that most autistic individuals love blinking twirling lights. My twin boys are mostly obsessed with the lights on the Christmas tree. So to save yourself so much trouble, pick your lights carefully. They will get plugged and unplugged over and over again. If blinking lights gives you a headache, take this under consideration.
If you have an artificial prelit tree, be aware that it may have a shorter life cycle. At our house, we only do real Christmas trees. It’s just a personal preference, plus I happen to live in North Carolina where Christmas tree farms abound. At the King house, we eventually discovered LED Christmas lights and we are currently in our 3rd season with the same lights. They even have a little button that changes the pattern so our little autistic brains can change them at will when desired. Which is often.
Tip #2
Our second tip for surviving and thriving Christmas with Autism is to check your calendar. Very, very carefully. While Christmas programs at church are wonderful ( we love the program our church does) and Christmas parades are crazy fun, it may not be the time in your life to try to schedule to do every little thing.
Autistic kids get over stimulated very easily and this does not bode well for family enjoyment of the season. My advice is to look through your calendar and pick out just a couple of items that are your top priority. And visiting Santa is definitely a hit or miss so play this one by ear and skip it if you think it won’t go well. This year, we opted not to participate in the Christmas program. We can still watch it, but don’t have the stress of making our children participate and behave just right at the proper time. We will absolutely drive around town to look at the lights and decorations around town. The kids are in their own familiar vehicle, and it’s so easy to just return home if they start getting tired of looking. Movie nights at home among the Christmas decorations is always a win here. And Massi, our service dog, also loves to watch movies with us and wag his tail at the exciting parts.
Tip #3
Be so very careful when out visiting with your extended family. Most family members mean well, but especially if you go to a relative’s home to visit and a crowd of people are present, be prepared for over stimulation and melt downs.
If you need to have family Christmas with multiple family members, offer to have them over to your home to celebrate. This way, your child can escape to their own private space that is familiar to them when they have had enough. Also you house is likely already autism proofed, and you won’t have near as much stress trying to keep your curious kids from breaking items from other people’s homes. Autistic children also struggle with eating when they are in a crowd of people, so being home helps this some. No one wants a hangry autistic child on the happiest day of the year. If you do need to travel or visit a relative’s home, try to keep it as simple as possible. Stay less than 48 hours and don’t plan too many activities. Autistic people struggle with transitions and whew- Christmas is transition overload.
Tip #4
Our final tip for surviving and thriving Christmas with autism is to bring out the baking sheets. Christmas baking is the top dog in our house during the season. It’s great sensory activity to help with dough rolling, sprinkling etc. My kids love to watch cookies baking in the oven. Plus, they are getting special focused individual time that usually involves some kind of laughter and hugging. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just get in your kitchen and start baking. The delicious smells coming from our kitchen this time of the year help make memories that last all year.
In conclusion, don’t sweat the small stuff. Christmas is beautifully done when we focus on what we can do rather than what we can’t. I love seeing that Christmas magic on my little one’s faces when we bring Christmas to life in our home. We didn’t learn to do Christmas overnight, but we can now manage with very few meltdowns. We wish you a very safe holiday season from faithhealthautism. Faith Health Autism is so thankful that you read our blog and we can’t wait to see 2024.
P.S. There may or may not be chickens involved in 2024. We’ll see how it goes. We have lots of openings for 2024 for our autism friendly vacation home. It has had a positive response from the special needs neurodiverse autistic community as well as neurotypical ordinaries like myself. If you would like to look at our post for that, please click the link here. https://faithhealthautism.com/autism-friendly-mountain-vacation-farmhouse/
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