Families with a member (or more) on the spectrum know how tricky holidays can be.\u00a0 Holidays are not, by definition, the same as other days–and anyone who finds a change in schedule or surroundings stressful will\u00a0 find holidays stressful on all counts.<\/p>\n
The winter holiday season can be the worst–kids are out of school longer, stores are more crowded and noisier and full of sensory-overload inputs–smells, sights, sounds.\u00a0 Families are expected to gather, including those parts of the family that have not yet come to terms with the reality of Autism-spectrum conditions.\u00a0\u00a0 “Why don’t you just make him\/her–” eat that food\/play with that cousin\/talk\/behave properly\/be quiet….the demands can be harsh at the very time when other\u00a0 people are (apparently) relaxing and having a good time.<\/p>\n
Solutions?\u00a0\u00a0 As many as there are creative parents to devise them.\u00a0 For some, avoiding those who can’t adapt and accept…for others, limiting exposure to them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Creating a plan ahead of time helps–makes limits clear even to those who will transgress them (“Remember, I said that if you and Dad kept criticizing Joey, we would leave early.\u00a0\u00a0 We love you, but we also love our son.”)\u00a0\u00a0 Opting for fewer holiday-specific activities helps in some cases (if you have a son with absolute pitch and a love of music, do not take him to a community carol event in which many people will sing off-key until you’re sure he has the social skills not to say so right out loud, right there.)<\/p>\n
Evading trouble is not being a wimp–it’s good planning.\u00a0 Life on the spectrum offers plenty of challenges without walking into a minefield intentionally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Families with a member (or more) on the spectrum know how tricky holidays can be.\u00a0 Holidays are not, by definition, the same as other days–and anyone who finds a change in schedule or surroundings stressful will\u00a0 find holidays stressful on all counts. The winter holiday season can be the worst–kids are out of school longer, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[9,8],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-socialization","tag-holidays","tag-social-skills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}