Tips for a SEN Christmas

Summary

  • It’s 1 day - stick to your everyday routines

  • Don’t overwhelm - spread out opening presents

  • Follow your child’s lead - don’t expect too much for them.

  • Be prepared - use everything you can to organise

  • Think sensory

Christmas is a terrible time of year for some little ones. When the world is busy, they don’t want to be! Here’s some tips for a positive Christmas

1) Keep calm its only Christmas - Having a calm settled experience over Christmas will benefit everyone in the family. It is only one day, is it really worth backtracking all that positive good work you have done developing routines and building confidence in your child to knock it back and set them back.

2) Think sensory - If there is more anxiety and the possibility of challenging behaviour and meltdowns then think sensory. There are new smells, brighter lights, busier places over the Christmas period. Think of the sensory impact on your child, try and figure out what may be causing sensory overload and remove it.

3) The overwhelm - Is it too overwhelming, everything is different, busy, there is more of everything at Christmas. It has been built up to be commercialised, bigger and better every year. But is bigger and better best for your family? Say no to extra family visits and shopping trips if it will overwhelm.

4) Less is more - For the last few years now I have realised that Christmas presents are rarely all opened on Christmas day, so why not space out the presents. If it’s going to be too much for your little one, then let them open a few on boxing day. Or New Year’s Day perhaps? Don’t overwhelm. I also go off a present list, once it’s done and ticked off that’s it, no more. Helps keep me in budget and stops the present pile being overwhelming.

5) Don’t wrap presents - We have stopped wrapping presents. The overwhelm, mess and anxiety was too much and at times ruined a perfectly good Christmas day. So one of the best ways to remove the anxiety is to no longer wrap our Christmas presents. We have these huge Santa sacks that I just put the children’s presents in. None of them mind, and it takes a huge weight off my shoulders not having to wrap everything.

6) Have a Christmas drawer - I have 2 at the moment and will probably have 3 from this week. Drawer one is in my bed, I have a divan bed and I clear out one of the drawers to stash the children’s presents in it. As I put more presents in, it reminds me how much I have bought them already. The next drawer is a drawer in the freezer, this is my Christmas dinner drawer, I start adding to this whenever I come across anything we will eat on Christmas day, I got pigs in blankets this week! Obviously not everything for Christmas dinner will go in there, but the freezer stuff can! The final drawer is the treat drawer, from now until Christmas I will pick up extra treats and pop them in the drawer so by Christmas we will have lots of goodies.

7) Christmas Dinner doesn’t have to be on Christmas Day - Probably one of the worst parts of being a single parent at Christmas is the burden you carry to do everything. I am on my own with no family to go to on Christmas Day, which means I have to balance, opening presents with cooking the dinner, building all the toys, playing with the children, all the cleaning and all the washing up!! So, to make things easier and so I don’t miss out on the kids opening and playing with presents I sometimes do the Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve or even Boxing Day!! Whatever works for our family. Sometimes it can be so overwhelming so I need to do whatever helps for our family.

Hope it helps!

Georgina x