6 Easy Ways to Make Your Home Autism-Friendly

For many autistic people, the world is challenging at every turn. School, work, playgrounds, social and cultural events, even birthday parties are loaded with possibilities for sensory overload, bullying, frustration, or confusion.

Sometimes, there are barriers to your loved one's well-being right in your own home. Yet with a minimal amount of fuss and money, you can turn your child's home into an autism-friendly sanctuary where they can finally relax.

This article considers how an autistic person may experience or navigate the challenges of a home environment. It offers ideas on how to make your home more autism-friendly.

Why Ordinary Activities Can Be Overwhelming

Often, autistic people are unusually sensitive to any kind of sensory "assault," ranging from loud noises to bright lights and crowds. They're also more likely than neurotypical peers to find changes in routine, new foods, new people, and new settings to be overwhelming or upsetting. Even a trip to the grocery store can become a difficult challenge.

Barriers to an Autism-Friendly Home

For autistic people, home should be (at least some of the time) a real sanctuary. Unfortunately, though, that's not always possible or practical. Here are just a few of the issues standing in the way:

• Siblings and parents also have needs. They may choose to invite friends, make noise, select new foods, or otherwise change up and complicate home life.
• Many of the therapies recommended for autistic children are home-based, meaning that after hours in school (with school-based therapies tossed in), children may return home to yet more hours of therapy provided by parents and/or mobile therapists.
• Family life is not always predictable or calm. Emergencies and life-changing events often mean at least a brief period of disruption. A sibling is injured, a grandparent gets sick—and things just inevitably have to change.

Making Your Home More Autism-Friendly

No real-world home is going to be a perfectly calm oasis for an autistic person. So what can families do to promote a relaxed experience and respite from the challenges of the wider world? Here are some practical recommendations:

1. Provide a realistic schedule that you and your autistic family member can expect to follow, at least most of the time. That may be as simple as "Come home, change clothes, watch TV for one hour, eat dinner, take a shower, do homework, go to bed." Put the schedule into a visual format, and be sure that everyone understands what's expected. This type of schedule is usually just as appropriate for siblings as it is for autistic youngsters.
2. Give your child space and time to relax alone. For many autistic people, downtime and alone time are absolutely essential.
3. Keep preferred foods in the house, so that your autistic family member can expect to eat at least one item he or she actively enjoys. That doesn't mean "never eat anything new," but it does mean that your autistic family member can look forward to eating something expected, tasty, and comforting. 
4. Scout out and remove smells, sounds, and lights that are really bothersome. Yes, you need to use cleaning supplies—but you may be able to find some with minimal odors. Yes, your other children can listen to music—but they may be able to use headphones. Yes, you need light in your home—but fluorescent lights can be really uncomfortable for someone with sensory challenges.
5. Limit at-home therapies to what's really useful, necessary, and relatively pleasant for your autistic child. No child should come home in a state of dread, knowing that hours of unpleasant therapy lie in store! Often, it's possible for parents and therapists to provide play-based therapies or relaxing sensory or occupational therapies in the home. These types of therapies are most likely to be fun for the child—and help to build rather than strain family ties.
6. Keep an eye out for signs of stress in your autistic family member. They may not be able to communicate exactly what's bothering them, so you may need to do a little detective work to determine that, for example, the smell of cabbage cooking is driving them nuts, or their younger sister's constantly-buzzing cell phone is getting on their nerves. Once you've zeroed in on a problem, you can brainstorm simple solutions (skip the cabbage, put the phone on mute).