Are you stressed about navigating the holidays with your neurodivergent child? How do you avoid sensory overwhelm, meltdowns, and behavioral challenges during the hustle of the holiday season? What about the complexities of family dynamics?
- When Uncle Joe tells you to nip “bad” behavior in the bud,
- Or Grandma pressures you to get your kids “under control”
You know that your autistic child (or ADHD kiddo) needs support, but what do you do at the moment? Friend, I’ve got you. In this video, I share 5 of my best strategies to help you and your neurodivergent child thrive during the holiday season.
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Sensory Overwhelm During the Holidays
Learn about the eight sensory systems which include more than you ever learned about in school.
- Sight
- Taste
- Touch
- Hearing
- Smell
- Proprioceptive
- Vestibular
- Interoception
We’ll discuss how knowing both your own and your child’s sensory processing needs can impact emotional regulation, behavior, and your entire holiday season.
Scroll to the Bottom for the Holiday Sensory Support Workshop
Emotional Regulation During the Holidays
In this video, we’ll dive deeply into emotional regulation and the neurodivergent brain (ADHD, Autism, etc). Then we’ll address how understanding this concept can help you better support your child this Christmas.
Emotional regulation describes our ability to manage emotional reactions healthily and appropriately for the context.
Emotional Regulation as a Healthy Process
Let’s use an example that you may relate to.
Perhaps you feel frustrated with your boss. They may have a pattern of disrespect. At one point, they’ve pushed you too far and you’re ready to scream or worse. But you don’t scream because you’d get fired. You’ve regulated your response to your internal emotional experience.
However, that’s just part of healthy emotional regulation. If you ignore those feelings entirely and shove them down, over time, you may become unhealthy. You may develop negative health symptoms such as:
- migraines
- autoimmune conditions,
- anxiety or depression,
- excessive eating or unhealthy eating patterns
Healthy emotional regulation includes processing emotional experiences so that they can be released. This is an important concept for us to teach our children and ourselves.
Executive Functioning During the Holidays
Even more, in this video we’ll discuss the neurodivergent brain, the prefrontal cortex, and executive function skills. How do these factors contribute to their ability to navigate the stressors of the holidays?
5 Possible Holiday Stressors for Neurodivergent Kids
It’s important to understand that your child’s stressors may not be yours. Stressful experiences for a neurodivergent child may include:
1. Changes to the Schedule
Schedule changes can be difficult for neurotypical parents in charge of the schedule. They’ll likely be even worse for neurodivergent children who have no choice in the matter.
2. More Events on the Schedule
Even if your child is excited about a Christmas party it does not mean that their little nervous systems don’t feel the impact of the excitement. Becoming dysregulated can occur even because of exciting and joyful events.
3. Reduced Downtime
Speaking of the schedule, during the holiday season it can be extremely easy to ignore downtime. This is a mistake. Your child will likely need more downtime to support a healthy and regulated nervous system. Downtime is not a luxury, but a physical and mental health necessity.
4. Questions and Quizzes
If Aunt Edna has a habit of quizzing your child about their times tables, you may need to nip it in the bud. Quizzing ADHD or Autistic kids by questioning them about their academic knowledge is rude. It puts kids on the defensive by their autonomic fight-or-flight response.
Friend, did you know that autistic children and those with ADHD hear more than 10,000 negative messages by the time they’re 12?
They don’t need family time to be another time when they’re expected to perform. Let them be. (This is especially important for autistic children with a PDA profile.) Of course, if your child likes to be quizzed, this won’t be an issue.
5. Conversations
Your child may not be a conversationalist. When adults or other children expect conversation from your child, this may be another demand on their cognitive load.
Whether labeled non-verbal autism or not, many neurodivergent people lose the ability to speak aloud when under stress. They can become non-speaking or experience selective mutism. This is a survival response and is important to keep in mind this holiday season.
Watch 5 Sensory Strategies to Support Your Neurodivergent Child This Holiday Season
Watch the video where I share five strategies to support neurodivergent kids (ADHD, Autism) and families this holiday season.
- Give Your Child Emotional Regulation Tools
- Check Your Expectations: Are They Developmentally Appropriate?
- Plan for Sensory Needs and Accommodations
- BYOF (Bring Your Approved Food Items)
- Don’t Overschedule (Learn to Say, “No.”
Plus, we dive into how to navigate multiple holiday gathering scenarios so your child (and you) are set up for success.
No time to watch? Do what I do.
- Grab a pair of earbuds,
- Press play on the video,
- Fold clothes, wash dishes, etc.
- And listen to Surviving Holiday Chaos: Sensory Processing and Behavior Strategies for Your Family as a podcast.
I get the time crunch, Friend. It’s the holiday season and you may have a house full of ADHD or autistic kids. Do your best and know that you’re doing great.
So, Friend. How do you thrive as a neurodivergent family during the holidays? Would love to hear from you.
About the Author:
Lindsay is a trauma-informed educator with a Master’s Degree in Teaching. Her mission is to support moms to equip neurodivergent kids (ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, Anxiety) to thrive as exactly who they’ve been created to be. Wait until you hear the story that led to it all…
