The Holiday Season offers our children a lot of wonderful opportunities to experience rich and meaningful language stimulation and even the possibilities of more time as a family to concentrate on spending quality time and engagement. However, for many families who have a child or children with communication challenges, there frequently can be unforeseen challenges as their routines can alter quite dramatically. This is especially true for a large number of children who often struggle with coexisting executive functioning challenges.
Many children with communication disorders also have overlapping Autism Spectrum Disorder or ADHD, or may struggle with sensory overload. For these individuals, large crowds, loud sounds, and unfamiliar environments are difficult to manage and are overwhelming. These are all common to the Holiday Season. Moreover, children with Autism or other executive function disorders require or fare best when provided with predictable schedules, as this helps not only process information clearly, but can provide emotional comfort. This may add increased stress that may result in hardships felt by the family.
However, there are some suggestions to consider to help ease the added stress and allow for the best possible navigation of this season in order to help the whole family celebrate. First, consider trying to maintain already established routines when possible. This includes bed times and meal times, and opportunities for them to have needed down time. Continue to enforce their usual screen time limitations. Also, use tools to illustrate and discuss the known changes . Talk to your children about the upcoming changes and events helping them to prepare, anticipate, and have clear expectations. Provided visuals and countdown calendars to help them see the changes in concrete ways.
Other ideas include making opportunities to practice having some changes to their schedule in order for you to see how they react, to problem solve solutions and anticipate challenges, allowing additional time for preparations to limit “rushing and time stress”, packing comfort items, and making a clear and understood exit strategy for specific activities (e.g. unwanted hugs, foods etc.) And finally for very young children, consider having a strategy in mind for taking a break or even leaving when they have “met their limit”. Thinking through possible hiccups and making preparations can go a long way in helping provide the best possible outcomes for everyone to enjoy their holidays and time off.