As the holiday season approaches, parents are faced with excitement and nerves. While it is a fun time of the year where kids can spend time with their families, it can be a stressful time for children with special needs. Some things to consider during this holiday season are how to help prepare your child for transitioning between different holidays and giving them an idea of what to expect. As we all know from this year, transitioning can be very hard especially for those kids who need a little extra help understanding changes to routine. Here are some strategies to help your child throughout this holiday season:

This is critical for those who thrive off of routine and visual cues. A visual calendar can be very helpful in preparing the child for transitioning and helping them anticipate what is coming next. There are plenty of visual schedules to chose from. You can make it yourself, buy it in a retail store or online. You can customize your calendars with pictures of holiday characters, the child doing the activity, or a countdown until a certain date so they know what to expect. Get the child involved in making the calendar through taking pictures and allowing them to decorate it how they see fit.

Social stories can be very helpful especially with children who have a hard time with changes and children with autism to understand what is coming next and how to prepare his/her body for it. You can ask your therapist for specific social stories and customizing them to fit your child’s needs. The social stories can range from holiday social skills to holiday dining etiquette.

While the holiday season can be very fun, it can also be overwhelming to those who have sensory processing disorders. While a feast with family is calming and relaxing for most, it can send some children into a “sensory overload”.  Having scheduled quiet time to allow your child to decompress from the extra activities and external stimuli that can be overwhelming (i.e bright lights, certain scents, loud noise/music, etc) can be a great way to include them and also allow them to get what their body needs. Also, having supports such as ear plugs, headphones, and a quiet room to retreat to can be great options to prevent them from  becoming overstimulated. For those who are “sensory seekers”, we recommend that you find activities that offer the child to move/carry something heavy or eat chewy/crunchy food to help calm their system down. Also, allowing the child to have “movement breaks” can help reduce their sensory seeking behaviors as well. Listed below are several options for sensory strategies to use during the day to help keep your child calm and regulated.

We hope these strategies help and that you have a wonderful holiday season,

Mallory Goettl MS OTR/L and Ellen Snyder MSOT OTR/L

Decreasing Stress Around the Holidays

Even under normal circumstances, returning to school can be stressful for parents and children alike. Transitions, uncertainty, and change in general are just plain hard. Returning to school under the restrictions of COVID, however, only exacerbates the worries that parents and children are experiencing.

For children there are some helpful things parents can do to help. Putting into practice some or all of these strategies can help alleviate some of the fears and anxiety that surround this dreaded annual transition.

Easing Back to School Fears and Anxiety

To improve someone’s spirit by giving them hope or confidence.

To every mom, dad, grandma, granddad, aunt, uncle, brother, and sister – we see you. Challenging would be the optimal word to describe our current situation. Routines have been thrown out of the window, changes of scenery depend 100% on weather or the amount of gas in the car’s tank. Your support system has become distant and virtual, nonfamilial human touch is nonexistent and it is you and your child 100% of the time. Explanations aren’t always easy and fear of the unknown can lace every breath. As you manage laundry, meals, cleaning, tantrums, bandaids, questions, disrupted sleep, school work, medications, messes, and rainy days we’ve asked you to add teletherapy to the mix.

While this may seem easy, it is in fact far more difficult than either party could have ever anticipated. You now rely on our instruction and we rely on your skill. You’ve become a PT, OT, SLP overnight. We ask you to feel the subtle differences while positioning, manage fear and vomit with feeding, reduce frustration with difficult motor tasks, and if that is not enough, we ask you to do that even when not in our virtual treatment room. It can feel overwhelming. A daunting task. You don’t want to tell us you didn’t do it. You may struggle with feelings of guilt for just making it through the day without giving a thought to the extra things we’ve asked of you. You may be just barely holding it together.

Let me tell you, WE ARE PROUD OF YOU! On top of the fears, heartbreak, struggles, and emotions you already manage as the parent of a child with special needs, a pandemic has been added to your plate. But you are excelling! You wake up each day. Your child is fed. Your child is happy. And you are able to do that day after day.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to travel abroad and interact with the forgotten children of an entire country. Here is an excerpt from my journal during that time:

The difference that keeps me going and provides my passion is the difference between forgotten and loved. At the end of the day, your child is loved. Your child has a roof and 4 walls. You refuse to let your child be an outcast and we come along beside you and fight for them too. Each precious face and beautiful set of eyes is loved.

Did you accomplish the whole to-do list for today? No. Did you devote 10 minutes to the home exercises we talked about? No. Are there toys on the floor? Yes. Piles of laundry? Yes. That’s OK! We see you doing your best during these challenging times. We come alongside you to encourage you. You can do this! You are doing this!

General

Decreasing Stress Around the Holidays

Easing Back to School Fears and Anxiety

Parents, we see you! You are not alone.