"If you live in an autism family like I do, you may be feeling anxious about Thanksgiving and your autistic loved one. The holidays for Nat promise so many things he loves: favorite foods, especially desserts, his brothers visiting, and ritual. If a holiday involves lighting candles, he's a happy man. He memorizes prayers and holiday songs and fully expects all of them every time."
"We try to accommodate Nat in terms of schedules and fulfilling expectations. But we are human, and that means errors, forgetfulness, and just plain abrupt changes are part of celebration, too. Now that he is 36, Nat has learned so much about the inconsistency of people, and he has figured out how to keep his anxiety in check. He is so different than when he was little, when he did not understand things he rarely experienced, and we did not understand what he needed: structure."
"Once we figured out how to structure and explain to him, ahead of time, as many experiences as we could, our lives changed for the better. Once I could tease apart that knot in the center of his anxiety, that one thing he was asking for, Nat became a calmer person in general. Most of the time, the heart of things was how an event would look, how it would start, and how it would end."
Clear schedules, predictable rituals, and advance explanations ease holiday-related anxiety for autistic individuals. Personal preferences such as favorite foods, rituals, and familiar songs can anchor comfort during celebrations. Accommodations for expectations and routines matter, but human errors and abrupt changes still occur. Over time, experience and consistent structure teach confidence and foster trust. Identifying the specific element that triggers anxiety—often how an event will look, begin, and end—permits targeted planning. Techniques like social stories, comparisons to familiar events, and calm parental responses help manage stress. Celebrating any progress, however small, reinforces positive outcomes.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]