How Do You Handle Thanksgiving?
Of course, it's almost impossible to avoid Thanksgiving. Even the most understanding families do NOT understand the idea of staying at home to stave off melt-down.
We do a fair amount of preparation for Thanksgiving, from conversations to photos to detailed plans for the day. If we're traveling, we pack along the foods I know my son will enoy -- and we bring our own videos, as a way to create a sense of normalcy in the course of a crazy day.
What are your most successful strategies for managing Thanksgiving on the spectrum? How do you prepare your family member with autism to manage the stress of the day? Do you work with your extended family to improve communication with their autistic relative? What do you do when you child can't or won't try the stuffing?
Comments
Hi Lisa—your questions inspired me to put together this list of “Thanksgiving survival suggestions. Thanks!
We have it easy. We do not live near any extended family on either my husband’s side or my side. So we just do Thanksgiving as a family. We do a turkey, make dressing, a pumpkin pie –the rest of the meal consists of favorite dishes we rarely take the time to make. It’s great! But sometimes I miss extended family gatherings, especially now that Jalen’s older. When he was younger, I pretty much guarantee they would have been something of a disaster.
Cynthia
We actually just skip Thanksgiving. I fought against this obvious solution for a few years, but I have since made peace with blowing off the holiday. Our plans instead have been to hook up with family the day after for casual food and games. This has worked out great for us. My girls shouldn’t (and wouldn’t for the most part) eat the traditional feast, and then requiring them to sit still for a long meal at a fancy table…not too relaxing for me anyway.
Maybe our solution wouldn’t work for everyone, but once I decided to let my Thanksgiving Day expectations go, I found at the end of the day, I certainly felt a lot more thankful for the relative peace and relaxation we now share rather than the stress and anxiety of Turkey Day’s past.
We feel family gatherings are important and we realize they can be challenging. So much like you, we prepare.
1.We talk about Thanksgiving with our son in very basic ways
2.We look at pictures together of Thanksgiving-related things like Turkeys and “the boat” (The Mayflower).
3. We travel several hours by car to grandparents so we go prepared with foods, videos, a few toys, etc.
4.We countdown the days - sometimes making it into a sing-song verse to help our son remember. He really enjoys this.
5. We make sure there is one room at his grandparents where he can get away for awhile and watch his movies or play with a toy.
We are lucky everyone is here in the same town ….For years it was a disaster-(I am from a large, loud family that loves bread and dairy produncts)-We now celebrate with my mom-in-law the night before- She takes the boys for a few hours to give my husband and I a break and has my boys make “vegetable” centerpieces ( they mostly get eaten:-) ) They also have a nice tradition of watching the Charlie Brown CHristmas video. The music always calms my son down. Then we all meet up her house and are thankful have nice quiet dietary friendly meal-
On Thanksgiving day we take a nice walk and stay at home.
We avoid huge gatherings — this year, there will be five of us for the holiday — and keep dinner reasonably simple and casual. I fix things I know my son can and will eat (green bean cassarole, mashed potatoes) and don’t require him to eat anything he knows he doesn’t like.
We try to have the dinner at our home, but if we’ve traveled somewhere else (as we have in the past) we take familiar things–a favorite blanket, toy, movie–and keep to our regular routine as much as possible.
Ever since we noticed our son was “different”, we have had Thanksgiving here at home. It is usually just us and maybe a couple of others. We keep it very casual and the boys make the decorations themselves. I try to make the menu simple, yet traditional. He doesn’t have to eat anything he doesn’t want to. Afterwards, we usually celebrate by going to the movies.
I think I am lucky we don’t have a big family either. My son is 8 now and does enjoy the get togethers, but only because there is only 5 of us. If there was a big family it would have been to much. He loves to eat turkey, mashed potatoes and I make a pumpkin cake instead of pie, and he loves that. He has to follow any calendar holiday! oh joy for me!!!
This will be our first holiday since my grandson was diagnosed with Asperger’s/ADHD. Holidays have always been a challenge, but since he has been on his ADHD medication, his autisim has really come to the surface. Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated.
We usually travel to my parent’s house for Thanksgiving which is an 8 hour drive. The drive is usually the most difficult so we make sure we bring plenty of books, toys, video games and we bring our portable DVD player. We stop often to let our son stretch his legs and we try to keep things calm and enjoy the drive. We take our time and don’t make him feel rushed or overwhelmed. My family is very understanding of our son’s issues and they don’t bombard him with hugs and kisses when we get there…they wait for him to initiate contact with them. He has lots of toys and books and DVD’s to make him feel at home. We still have the occasional meltdown, but luckily my family is very understanding and it makes it so much easier on us. My best advice is that if you must attend a large get together…try to make sure your loved ones understand what will help your child in these situations.
I know this is easier said than done…not everyone understands (get togethers with my husband’s extended family are awful), I still explain things and if they don’t understand it is their problem…not mine…or my child’s. If he becomes too overwhelmed we just excuse ourselves to a nice quiet place or we head home. I made a decision a long time ago to stop stressing over what others think.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For this day to be enjoyable for the rest of the family (including yourself), you have to be easy on your child. Keep it as “normal” as possible. We eat at my mom’s and bring some Hot Wheels, videos, and books. My mom has a little play room so Kyle can escape if he needs to. There are so many days in the year that are not holidays when we can put the pressure on our kids to be involved and socialize, but Thanksgiving shouldn’t be one of them. I’m thankful that my family is happy and healthy and we’re all thankful for Kyle- HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!
We have the largest house, so we have Thanksgiving and Christmas at our home.
We have a small tent just out of the way of the main traffice area, so our son can go into the tent, and try to decompress, or whatever. We also allow him to go into the hallway, shut all the door, and sit in the dark, any time he needs to. Our family is very understanding.
We have Thanksgiving at our house. While our two youngest, both on the spectrum, don’t particularly enjoy all the people visiting, they have places they can escape to when they need to. They can go into the den and play computer games on one of the computers, or they can go to their room to play in relative quiet.
The last time we celebrated something at our mil’s house, it was a nightmare. Our youngest, who is sensory-seeking, spent his time jumping on the trampoline and running around the room and flipping up onto the couch. The older son became upset when Grandma wouldn’t let him turn on her computer. I think we lasted about an hour and a half.
So having Thanksgiving at our house works for us.