While many families of Autistic children spend months preparing their children for Christmas we do not have this issue. However our son does have issues when dealing with Christmas activities that do require careful handling.
For instance for many years my mother has on boxing day held a family meal which has grown to include as many as 20+ individuals and our son tends to not eat during these meals as there is just to much stimulus involved to allow him the comfort he requires for his meal. This year due to age and volume of individuals my mother has scaled back her meals to include one child’s family at a time drastically reducing the number of people involved. Interestingly enough our son still chose not to eat so even that did not reduce the stimulus enough to allow him comfort. On a side note even at home for our Christmas dinner he did not eat as well as he normally would so the simple break in routine of how the meal is handled could be enough to upset his equilibrium around the meal.
What was interesting is the presents. For the first year our son actively involved himself in opening his presents (at least up till he reached a toy that took his concentration away and he stopped anything else to play with it) Our son was definitely enjoying his new toys and participated well in the general Christmas activities we normal do like waiting till my parents arrive to open presents and actively participating in the gift opening. He also constantly presented my father with his gifts to be taken out of the box and did try several toys until he found the one we tried to keep to the bottom of the pile (Leapster explorer was a toy we were well aware he was interested in due to his internet activity of late) and he opened all his presents till he got to it.
Interesting different thing that did occur during the day was that about halfway through the day for some reason he seemed to get overstimulated to the point where he was finding it difficult to cope. Rather then strike out (as he is quite capable of doing) he walked off and went upstairs to our room and sat in the dark with the lights off and the blinds down (quietly still playing his game but away from all the bustle of the house) he chose to do this several times during the day leading us to believe that he can be well aware of when he is getting overstimulated and is quite willing to take himself away from the situation when necessary. It will be interesting to see if this behaviour continues through the year.
All in all this was another good Christmas. Our children were extremely happy with their gifts (though our 19mth old believes that her siblings explorers are hers and we may need to introduce them two years early to her) and our family did not incur debt to give them a decent Christmas. While the blog has suffered a bit due to time spent working and shopping to make their Christmas memorable I am able to sufficiently say in the aftermath that it was well worth the effort and we are all pleased with our successes during this busy time of year.
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