How has your ASD child coped today.

[JubileeTrifle]

ASD teen has had major meltdown. Refused Christmas dinner and then refused to eat with us at all. Cried about all the issues in her life.
Ate her beige dinner and has calmed down. First year she hasn’t sat with us. Sad.

My 9 year old, was up at 4am. (Which beats the Xmas eve he did a 30 hour stint awake!) Opened his presents fine, told us he didn’t have enough, told us he doesn’t like soft presents (clothes) only hard presents, ie PlayStation games 🤣 by 8am he’d had 4 kick offs over various shit and I was ready to put him in the recycling bin by this point.

He ate his plain pasta and 4 carrot sticks and a mince pie for his ‘Xmas dinner’ played on his iPad and PlayStation, didn’t want to play with his roblox toys he got as apparently they are boring, roblox is his most favourite thing so no idea with that,

he’s eaten half a bath bomb in the bath tonight like you do.

I’ve just given him his sleep medication and I hope he’s asleep by 8pm.

Overall not a bad day. And it went much better than yesterday which I don’t even have the energy to tell you about lol.

Merry Christmas 🎄

I think I’ve gotten off easy. She copes with the
morning fine and didn’t get up till 9 as that’s her standard time to get up anyways. She liked all her presents but had been a bit obsessed with a Lego set and been at it for 6 hours straight.

2 years ago we would have had a totally average Christmas Day. So it’s a a shock how it gets harder each year.

My asd child is now a grown up. He’s taken himself off at various points but done well.
He even tried some cranberry sauce!

I just wanted to say that for all of those with younger asd children it does get easier!

Loads better than last year. I did a lot of reading after last year. He seems to have enjoyed the day. It's been very quiet and chilled as it's only us two and I'm recovering from covid.

He didn't eat his meat but I did Yorkshire puds which he enjoyed. He seems to have liked his presents (not so much the books but most of them). On the whole, he's doing much better than last year's holiday.

DD10 managed really well for her (PDA so standards are different). Stayed in pyjamas all day, didn't complain about presents much, stayed mostly in the same room as us. DS7 ate purely sugar, built a lot of Lego, didn't stop talking at all , had a meltdown over not remembering to charge his tablet for bedtime then passed out.

We've removed almost all of the Christmas bits of Christmas. No other people, they can eat anything they like, no Christmas dinner (I have one in a pub the week before so I can get my fix), the lights on the tree are off and the volume on everything is low for sensory overload reasons.

From the outside, we didn't really appear to do Christmas. We need to replace at least one present that was wrong tomorrow, DS' Christmas cake wasn't decorated in time and he now hates it anyway, they ate sugar only so tomorrow will involve a LOT of crying, and the cats will probably vomit tonight after all the mini sausages and prawn cocktail they've stolen!

10yo son, surprisingly well but we've kept it extremely low key. He's been lining his new toy up.

Feel as though it could be the calm before the storm...

Other than staying up until around 2.30am she's done amazingly.

She opened all of her presents with gratitude (not always the case). She ate her chicken, Yorkshire puddings and cranberry sauce. And then actually shared some of her toys with her sibling without much arguing!

I think she has enjoyed putting everything into an order. I asked her "do you like that outfit Santa brought you?" She said "yes of course, I wouldn't have put it on if I didn't" 🤷🏼‍♀️ simple and to the point as ever!

I think it's because shes more comfortable with just me and her siblings at home. No visitors, no visiting. Don't bother giving her food she won't eat just because she "should" have veg on her plate

DS(17) has had a good day after grumping through Christmas Eve. The Xbox gift card in his stocking helped enormously.

Sometimes Christmas Day is overwhelming for our kids and it can be as simple as opening the first gift and being disappointed in finding smellies that knocks them off their stride (that was a fun year - not).

Your DD had calmed down and ate her dinner, as she’s been overwhelmed this year that’s a definite win!

Merry Christmas!

Mine (12) has done great actually, considering how overexcited he was yesterday. However we do a very low-key Christmas with just myself, DS's dad, and 19yr old DD. We don't have high expectations of a Perfect Day which seems to help a lot tbh.

He woke up at 4am but managed to be very quiet and not wake me until 7 (well, I heard him at 4 rustling around with his stocking but then I went back to sleep).

Agreed to walk the dog without any arguments or calling me unrepeatable names "seeing as it's Christmas" and was very pleasant company on the walk.

Ate nothing but his own bodyweight in chocolate, quorn nuggets, and jelly (oh and one roast potato) but hey who gives a shit, it's only one day.

Took himself off to bed about 20 minutes ago to read his new book on black holes that Santa brought.

I'm drinking sloe gin and waiting for him to remember the 3 gifts he hasn't yet opened and get back out of bed for them. Hopefully he does it soon and not at 4am tomorrow morning 🤣

dd 15 came to gp’s, ate diner with us but other than that was on their phone with head phones on and wouldn’t talk to anyone (did say thank you when we left) so I think they coped really well.

Ahh bless, it’s always a bit of roulette isn’t it? Mine (17) has been ace today. I didn’t throw any major surprises in his presents, so he loves everything I got him. My mum keeps asking if he feels upset or let down that she just gave him cash and no surprises but that’s what makes him the happiest, and he’s scrolling online deciding how to spend it.
He’s sat in the same room as us and had his dinner. Enjoyed it, joined in a bit with the conversation and is now helping mum with the washing up while I’ve retreated to the sofa with the remains of the Prosecco and the quality street.
He’s happy, I’m happy, mum’s happy, DS1 is happy….
I expect he’ll scarper to his room shortly with a can of pop and a computer game, but that’s fine too. He’s been a proper love.
We’ve kept it simple, predictable and homely - all the things he likes best ❤️

DN14 (lives with us in a kinship care arrangement) has pretty much done her own thing all day after opening gifts and breakfast. We let her know what was in the gifts beforehand, she finds surprises stressful. We don’t have anyone visit Christmas Day and we don’t do visits. All of us are autistic and we get to this time of year and we are just done, so we make Christmas as low stress as possible.

DH and I have been out for a walk with the dogs, DN has mostly been in her room watching YouTube videos as far as I can gather. She doesn’t seem interested in sitting with us, but that’s ok, she’ll come down if and when she’s ready, probably when food appears. Dinner will be a takeaway curry. Far too hard to do a Christmas dinner - too many things to do, can’t keep track of timings of things and the clearing up operation is too much.

5 year old here. Very up and down. A few meltdowns but nothing unmanageable. I'm exhausted from supporting him through the day.

It's been a big one this year so he's done remarkably well really

Ds 14. Surprisingly well. We learnt quite a few years back to simply let him do his own thing. He never eats with us the other 364 days of the year, so no forcing that.

Something that we did for the first time this year was to open the presents from the children to each other and us on Christmas Eve. This then saved the usual continual "when are we opening the presents?" we usually get. He's happily playing on FIFA now.

Tomorrow may well be different.

My four year old had no clue whatsoever was going on but he enjoyed the snowman, my silky dress and lots of sausages!

17 year old DD, recently diagnosed, spent her life masking so this is new to me.
Told her to just leave if it was overwhelming at any point. Got her some Loop Quiet ear plugs to help with the noise from DS10 and DD4. DH (her SD) upset her once so she disappeared for a bit, but has just been in and out of her room most of the day. Ate a fairly beige lunch, and is now enjoying organising her room.

It's fascinating reading these comments - none of us are diagnosed with ASD, but much of this describes our day. There were no surprises - we went to church (as usual), had a pre-agreed meal (pancakes; the only thing from a roast dinner DD(9) will eat is the meat) and DD knew what her presents would be. She's been building lego for most of the afternoon, as well as playing with our pets. It's just been the three of us. Behaviour has been good, but I wonder if that's because we've pre-empted most things.

12 yo was in pjs all day.
14 yo had fight with 12 yo over where to sit on sofa and spent the afternoon in his room.
16 yo ate full roast dinner then curry.
18 yo actually ate with us and expressed some gratitude.

They all opened presents separately, we had no visitors (after the disaster of 2015 when we ate with two kids screaming on the floor), they put their own foods on their plates. All low key no surprises.

My DS bless isn't well he's on antibiotics he coped as best as he could he's only 5 he was stoked with his stocking presents and then he opened one or two downstairs but then curled up on my lap and stayed with me for sometime.
He then decided he would open more but then it all got too much for him and he did get rather upset he's spent most of the day in bed watching Disney cars I think that's more to do with being unwell and not feeling himself as opposed to overwhelmed.

Today was just another day. I did a buffet.
I look back at photos and find it hard to remember dd used to have heaps of presents, there was a lit up tree and so on.
After about 7 years old it just got harder to please her and bit by bit the less effort I made the happier she was. Between about 11 and 20 years old she wouldn't get out of bed until 4pm or so.
She liked her one present and spent some time downstairs, so a good day.

We've specifically not gone anywhere or visited today. Their dad came round to exchange presents and then we've just gone with the flow with no pressure.

Dd whose 11 with ASD has been alright for the most part

Ds 7 who has adhd has actually coped brilliantly as there been no pressure so no meltdowns

My ds who’s 22 years old and non verbal got up at 9 am and came bouncing down the hallway (If only I had that much energy every morning!) then preceded to open his presents in record time, I’ve never seen anyone open presents as fast as he does then just wander’s off😁

He’ll come back to the present later at some point, it may be in a few day’s but we’re not offended we just go with the flow for him.

He’s now in the study playing music on the computer.

Dd did really well - we know how to do ASD Christmas these days so PJs all day, no gifts off-list, no visitors to keep it low key, say yes to everything (within reason!).

Ds doesn't yet have a diagnosis (on the pathway), but his 5pm overwhelm meltdown is now on the list of 'evidence'. Send gin.

We had a couple of kicks off ds hit dd. On the whole he wasn't too bad. He enjoyed eating his dinner in the back room adject to us. He also stuffed all the pigs in blankets.

Ds8 has done really well! I've learned from other years to keep things chilled. I told the kids not to get out of bed too early in case Santa is still leaving gifts, so I think that he slept til about 7 which is great. Didn't get him too many things to open as he finds that overwhelming. After a few gifts he focussed on building some Lego then had some time upstairs on his tablet before coming back to open a few more presents. We just chunked up the day and didn't enforce games or family film or anything as I've done previous years before his diagnosis, I just let him have whatever time he needed. I think what worked for us too is my ex wasn't coming to see the kids til the afternoon and my mum only popped in for an hour at lunch time. So the whole morning was very slow paced. Ex's dad had to cancel, so we didn't have too many visitors in the end. Only issue was food which we had late afternoon, he suddenly decided he hated potatoes and chicken (turkey!) but did try a sprout and some carrots. Avoided any serious meltdowns which is a Christmas miracle for us.