Christmas is stressful.
I'm no Scrooge - I love Christmas. I love Christmas films and songs, tacky decorations, mince pies, mulled wine, Santa hats, all of it. It's stressful, though, and if it's stressful for neurotypical people it's positively overwhelming for autistic people.
In our house, my son Tyger is the only one of us with an official autism diagnosis, but his younger brother, Bear, is being assessed, I'm planning on pursuing an assessment in the New Year, and even my husband is almost certainly autistic.
Those of us on the autistic spectrum already struggle with processing sensory information, so you can imagine how tough the onslaught of Christmas can be: lights, sparkly decorations, tinsel, Christmas music, crowds, parties, winter spices, itchy hats and gloves, the list goes on and on.
It's no big surprise that sensory overload is a problem for autistic people in December, but it isn't the only problem.
Everyone complains about how early Christmas starts. From the second the last straggling trick or treaters make it back home, it's everywhere. Unfortunately, waiting and patience are problematic when autism is involved.
For one thing, autistic people can become somewhat obsessive. It's also quite common for people with autism to struggle to fill their time. Combine the two and you end up with children obsessing over the idea of Christmas and unable to do anything else. It makes the waiting – which is tough for kids at the best of times – not much short of torture.
Tyger, who's four, finds it especially difficult to occupy himself; waiting for Christmas is excruciating for him. We do our best to help. The boys have several different count-down devices. We have the usual chocolate advent calendars, plus we make paper chains on 1 December with 24 links and the boys take one off every night before bed. Then there's the elf to find every morning and this year they also each have a string of 24 tiny presents and cut the bottom one off each day.
The gifts (we're talking a couple of chocolate coins wrapped up, a troll pencil topper or a tiny 10p car from a charity shop, not an iPad!) help give them short-term treats to look forward to so they only need to wait a day rather than a month.
As well as helping with the wait, these tools set up a clear routine for the boys during the Christmas period. If someone knows just one thing about autism, it's that autistic people like routines - and Christmas disrupts routines.
For school-aged children, the Christmas nativity is a big disruption, as is the high rate of illness through winter. Tyger suffered both successively when he was off school due to illness for a fortnight and returned to find they'd started rehearsals every day.
Tyger used to really like school but even the most school-loving autistic child will probably be anxious about going back after an absence. Often, if they enjoy school, they're fine once they settle back into the routine - but that becomes tricky when the usual routine has been turned on its head.
We had delaying tactics, shouting, tears, fake injuries, you name it. Tyger was late for school more than once and he's still not as keen as he was. I could have done without all the school drama. Us adult Aspies have an extra reason for finding the Christmas period hard.
We often have difficulties with executive function - planning, attention, working memory etc. Buying presents, writing and sending cards, sorting a tree, putting up decorations, buying in all the booze food, remembering dates of parties and nativity plays and Christmas jumper days and fetes and market - all of these involve executive function. All take up a lot of energy for autistic people (and that's not even considering the social aspect of many of them, which is exhausting).
Of course, that doesn't stop me piling the pressure onto myself with lots of traditions I couldn't possibly not undertake. The boys must be taken to a garden centre so they can each choose a decoration for the tree. The fudge must be made. We must get up early and start with stockings before moving on to presents. We must have croissants for breakfast. We must toast to 'absent friends' at 11am…
More routine. I thought I enjoyed the magical customs of my childhood but have come to realise I need that familiar routine to enjoy a day full of chaos, noise, mess, expectations and demands, to get through the onslaught.
Christmas is still awesome, though.
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Guest post: "Christmas is overwhelming when you have autism"
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MumsnetGuestPosts · 19/12/2016 11:34
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zzzzz ·
22/12/2016 09:14
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zzzzz ·
23/12/2016 17:48
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karenjackson ·
23/12/2016 21:25
My little man hasn't got autism (just a variety of "other" problelms including a midline brain defect) but is very routine driven and Christmas definitely upsets his balance. Combine with that a very excited (nearly) 3 year old and a change in visits to his dad and we have a very upset (nearly) 10 year old.
Christmas is hard. And enjoyable. And hard.
Just like every day life 
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