I hate Christmas as SEN mum to a severely delayed child

[Fizzy89]

I said it, not sure if anyone else has. I hate Christmas now.

I used to LOVE Christmas, I was so annoyingly Christmassy before we had a kid.
My daughter is 6 but delayed to about 3 physically and about 2 mentally (but non verbal and ASD). She has no concept of Christmas. If she opens a present, she wants it to be her specialist interest or nothing - and she now has pretty much everything related to it. No concept of Father Christmas, what the decorations represent etc
Doesn't enjoy family gatherings so we've steered clear of those and minimised group sizes.

Me and my husband discused the other day that pre kids, Christmas is all parties, celebrating and a good time with good food and drink. Then you have kids and you trade all that in for Santa/magic thing for a while, then you still have the homely family and board games etc..

Well we don't have that, we can't have that. We have none of it. I'm just so fed up and this year find myself particularly envious of friends and their NT kids and experiences.

Just wondering if others out there feel the same and I'm not alone.

You're not alone, same here. It's really depressing every year. My ds is nearly 6 but he's more like a 1 year old mentally, especially this year as he's had a huge regression and gone from semi verbal to non verbal, and has 0 concept of Christmas and never has. He broke 3 toys already by biting them.