Twinkling lights, festive music and mouth-watering aromas. For many, these are cherished aspects of the holiday experience.
But for children with autism syndrome disorder, it can create sensory overload, which happens when one or more senses are overstimulated. That can turn what might seem like a time of great joy and togetherness into a challenging environment.
“This is the time of year that there's a lot of changes in our routine, changes in social expectations and a sense of lack of predictability,” said Brittney Rick-Betancourt, director of Little Leaves Behavioral Services Center, a Broward County center that provides early intervention for children with developmental delays.
To make holidays more enjoyable for children with autism and their families, Rick-Betancourt has a few suggestions for preparing in advance.
Advice for parents and guardians
Rick-Betancourt emphasizes that the best place to start is by talking through events and coming up with a solid game plan. This approach can help kids feel more prepared and adjust more smoothly to changes in their routines.
That can include figuring out whether to use visual aids like schedules and social stories — written narratives with pictures that aim to help people with autism understand social situations — to prepare the kid for the holiday events.
Rick-Betancourt also recommends deciding what outings or events to attend, like whether they’ll be shorter events or whether to arrive after an event has already started to avoid the initial rush.
“I talk to families often about not allowing the social pressures of your attendance to impact what works best for your family,” Rick-Betancourt said.
Another strategy is to create break spaces, which are essentially quiet places to go when you or your child become overwhelmed.
Practicing social skills through role play can also prove helpful in allowing children to feel more comfortable when interacting with others or even during gift exchanges.
“Oftentimes, a lot of my kids are so excited to share gifts that they give the gift at the same time as telling me what's inside the box,” Rick-Betancourt said.
She also says it’s important to know a child’s triggers — what overwhelms them.
“I don't want families to feel like ‘Oh, my gosh, that's bringing extra items, that's taking over somebody's space.’ I'm a mom of two, and when I travel with my little ones, I'm bringing in anything to make my 9-month-old happy. So that everybody can have an enjoyable experience,” Rick-Betancourt said.
If the child is already in therapy, she says it might serve as some extra help to communicate with the therapist what areas you would like for the child to work on to be prepared for the holidays — whether that is exposing the child to trying different foods or working on how to attend church services.
“You don't want to overexert yourself during the holiday season doing all of this prep work,” Rick-Betancourt said. “But it's just important to think about what's doable and tapping other people in to help you out.”
Advice for hosts
For people visiting family and friends over the holidays, she says it would be good to have a conversation about what hosts can anticipate.
“On the back end, I think families can have a list of prepared responses in case you get somebody who might say, ‘Why is your child acting that way?’ ” Rick-Betancourt says.
She also advises hosts to be open to adapting plans as needed, like by sharing one of the bedrooms as a break space and considering serving alternative food options.
When thinking about gifts, she says, sometimes the gifts don’t even have to be tangible; they can be experiences. For example, if the child likes animals, consider buying a family pass for the zoo.
“One child I know, he's really, really into clocks and timers, and so for the holidays last year … his favorite gift was something his little brother made him. Which was eight pages of world-famous clocks that he found on Google images, printed it out on computer paper, hole punched it and put it in a folder,” Rick-Betancourt added. “And he sat there and looked through the clocks over and over again, and he really enjoyed it.”
Another aspect to keep in mind while preparing for a trip is the type of transportation — car, train or plane. Depending on which, parents and guardians might need to prepare in different ways.
For example, if the child does not have headphones tolerance, then it would be good to start training the kid to use them. Or perhaps the child needs to learn how to use and tolerate airplane seat belts because those are different from the ones in cars. Another consideration is to pack snacks.
Resources for Families
Rick-Betancourt also says joining in-person and online support groups can also be helpful.
“Sometimes just having that connection with somebody else who has gone through the things that you're going through is just world-changing,” she added. “Sometimes being a caregiver to somebody with autism feels like you might be alone on an island.”
Little Leaves Behavioral Services, located in Weston, works with Applied Behavior Analysis therapy, a science that works on increasing behaviors that experts want children to have and replacing less-desirable behaviors.
Some children with autism struggle with communication, responding to safety commands and engaging in activities like doing puzzles.
“So we look to see if our little ones can engage with those items in a way that some neurotypical peers might, and if they can't, we want to support and teach them how these items can be reinforcing and how to participate in those sorts of settings,” Rick-Betancourt said.
“We can help with anything from school readiness to toilet training to flying on an airplane to going to a dentist [or] to tolerate having vitals taken.”
She says two great online resources for parents are the Center for Autism and Related Disabilities and the Autism Research Institute.
“Help is out there,” Rick-Betancourt said. “We want to make sure that families don't feel alone. We want to make sure that everybody feels supported.”
Copyright 2024 WLRN Public Media
