Holiday Sensory Overload
Understanding and helping kids with sensory
issues through the holidays
My house fills with the spicy sweet smell of cinnamon and cloves starting bright and early the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This is when I begin my annual ritual of baking pumpkin pies, apple pies, and all sorts of treats. Those addictive aromas bring me back to my childhood; to the memories of family and food that I value deeply. With the first scent in the air, my heart fills with happiness and anticipation of the holiday season. I look forward to this all year long, but as the oven preheats, my warm memories turn into a fiery blast of reality: My three sons hate these smells with as much intensity as I love them. Enter holiday sensory overload, and the pies aren’t even out of the oven yet.
My boys all have sensory issues, and two of them are on the Autism Spectrum. Technically, my boys’ challenges aren’t that simple; think of them being more akin to a pumpkin pie – a lot of one thing, a sprinkle or two of this and that, and then baked in a crust to keep it together – until it falls apart with the first bite. It isn’t that I don’t understand their challenges – quite the contrary; I’ve lived them every day for over 10 years – but I do have to remind myself that the holiday season creates a new set of sensory hurdles for them to jump. Every year. Without exception. And as their appointed hurdle-jumping-coach, it is my job to line up the hurdles, set the pace, and decide when they are just too tired to participate. Not an easy task, even for the most experienced coach.
Finding that balance between pushing them to jump more hurdles, and accepting when it’s time to just remove them all together, creates more meltdowns (from them) and more tantrums (from me) than I’d like to admit. However, over the years I’ve found that taking the time to remind myself of the basics – not only of sensory issues and behavior – but of the true definition of the holidays, whether that’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanza, Hanukah or anything in between – all holidays at their roots are intended to be a festivity where each of us can be engaged in celebrating the season with our family and friends.
In order for this to happen, we need to understand and accept the fact that children with sensory challenges experience sensory stimuli as a jumbled ‘traffic jam’ of information
coming into their brains, at its most simplistic is just pure stress. This isn’t how we as
adults usually see the holiday sights, smells, and sounds, but it is how our children see them. And since children with sensory processing challenges interpret the changes in sensory stimuli, routine and predictability differently that we do, it often results in unexpected or unwanted behaviors from them. But behavior is communication, and an honest reflection of the way their body is interpreting – or misinterpreting – an onslaught of incoming information from their 8 senses.
I try and think of the holidays from their point of view: A sensory world of not just smells, tastes, and sights, but of intense sensory input that is out of their comfort zone and control, interrupting their 8 senses and stressing them out. Even if the smell of cinnamon makes my heart sing and my mouth water, that is clearly not the case for my children. So let’s go through the 8 sensory systems and see just how children with sensory processing difficulties perceive and interpret the changes that come with the holiday season. And more importantly, how we can help them participate in family gatherings successfully.
"Takeing time to remind myself of the basics...[and]