Christmas for SEND Families

I realise that I've been MIA for a while now and apologise profusely. My New Year's resolution (that I'm hopeless at sticking to) will be to try harder! These past few weeks have been consumed with all the usual Christmas preparations that everyone tries to cram in, plus numerous Zoom / MS Teams meetings for the various voluntary projects we're involved with. I really can't work out how my scaled back Christmas, given that there will just be the three of us again, has still taken up so much time!

What does your usual Christmas look like? I was recently prompted to reflect on our own experiences by a fellow 22q mum. I hadn't really considered it from Harrison's perspective before but so much of this graphic from Contact resonates with me.

Harrison loves the Christmas decorations and clothing. So much so that he's on a daily countdown from the beginning of November for 1st December, which is when I get the decorations out of our loft and he starts wearing Christmas themed outfits. 

He's absolutely petrified of Halloween and won't even speak about it. We have to lock our front gates so that trick or treaters don't knock. With his anxiety back down to a manageable level again, he's ready to do Christmas from 1st November! We always have artificial trees because they're up for a whole month. We were on our own over Christmas last year for the first time since Harrison was born. As a result, we let him plan the menus. He struggles with swallowing meat and has really slow gut motility so doesn't enjoy a traditional roast dinner but tries his best for our sake. Being on our own we just had an all day buffet last year where we all chose some party food, laid it out on the lounge coffee table and let him eat whenever he wanted to. We're doing the same again this year with the turkey meal planned for sometime between Christmas and New Year. 

Harrison's tree decorated with representations of his favourite things. Can you see the fried egg and video game controllers?!

Even though he loves everything about this time of year, I think he gets overwhelmed on Christmas Day. He's really slow at opening his presents (we sometimes phase it over a couple of days) and he likes to have time to chill out on his own. Taking the pressure off means that we can all enjoy the big day in our own way.

However you're celebrating, we wish you an enjoyable Christmas and I'm not even going to mention 2022 because we have no idea how it'll all pan out!