Christmas for auties

[beccaelizabeth]

There's a thing at the Guardian today about making Christmas better for people with learning disabilities, especially autism. Christmas is all New and Improved and Different and More and Sparklier, and that's a whole list of things autistic spectrum people do not in fact consider good things. The sensory overload alone... blergh. I mean, I like sparkly, in the right place, but it's not just lights, it's noise and smells and food that doesn't taste the same and makes all my same usual food go away for the season and its all a bit much sometimes. And Christmas lights make me get lost. They change all the navigation points, nowhere look the same no more, it's all blinky and moving and covered in sparkles. It's all very pretty, but it's also very difficult. I realise most people's brain maps use things that are pretty likely to stay the same between visits, but my brain map is unhelpful. Sometimes it even latches on to a smell. Which actually works pretty good around some shops, but is very variable with time of day and season. If I've managed to remember a visual, putting blinky lights on everything means nothing looks like itself and I get all turned around. And the Guardian thingy says learning disabled people take a particular comfort from familiarity; from my own experience, I'd say it's not just that it's comforting, it's that you have to process A LOT of new data whenever something is unfamiliar. Like, NTs seem to have better filters for irrelevant things and for only noticing differences, like they're using good file compression, but I am not so great at filters and just get the whole giant bitmap to download and process and it takes really a lot of brain cells. I like things staying the same because it is much less exhausting and concentration intensive! Xmas is all about the new and different and sparkly bits you've not seen before (well, except when they're being cheap and use the same lights as last year, which is happening a lot lately and I actually like better). So, I like xmas season things when I'm in the mood for them, but they're a bit exhausting.

I quite like unwrapping presents. I am long resigned to not liking what's in the presents, since my mum has the amazing gift giving ability to manage to pick up part two of a trilogy you haven't started, or to find a very shiny thing that is in fact amazingly ugly or just inappropriate. The year of the very shiny bucket lingers in memory. Granted, it was silver and had a pattern on it, but it's a bucket. So mum got to keep that. And in fact most years xmas gift giving is immediately followed by xmas gift swapping. Which is kind of fun in itself.

But, some autistic spectrum people do not like unwrapping presents at all. There's a totally unknown thing in there. It could be anything. Who wants surprise random things? Not them. Chatting at the AS social group someone said about a kid who just has stacks and stacks of presents, like all the years of presents, because they never can unwrap them. What neither of us could understand was why does his family keep wrapping them in the first place! Even the Guardian article said 'try wrapping things they already own, its very reassuring to unwrap something familiar'. Which seems like anti good advice to me. It would be like taking one of your favourite things and making it all new again. Like getting your favourite blanket and wrapping it up and putting a New and Improved sticker on it. We all know what happens when things get New and Improved. No fun at all. And, also, if you grok the gift giving concept, it is cheating. So then you have your favourite thing back, after it was taken away and made different, and you do not have a gift. How is that supposed to help?

Instead, try not wrapping things.
They are still presents, they are just not covered in paper and tape.
You could tie a ribbon bow around them. Those slide off and do not conceal potentially disturbing depths.
You could put them in a sparkly bag. I like sparkly bags. Shops sell lots of shapes and sizes of bags, with little tags on so you can say who they are to. Bags are superior to paper and tape, because you can open the top and have a peek and think about it and decide if you are sure, or you can tip them out and stand well back, or you can reach in and poke things without committing to getting them out. Bags have options. And there are plain bags too for people that don't like sparkly.
Santa has a present sack so you can call it Traditional, it's just a little less wrapped than usual.
And stockings are good. Stockings remain the same year after year, and some of the things in them will be traditional, like if people like chocolate coins or a bag of chocolate buttons or whatever. It's a buffer for the maybe new things. Or you can give the same presents every year, like if someone uses a lot of paper and pens, or paper and printer ink I guess. New supplies are a good present.

So often advice about how to interact with autistic spectrum people is 'autistic spectrum people will not have fun doing things the NT people around them are doing, so try and get them used to it'. :-p Try instead 'autistic spectrum people will not have fun doing things the NT way, so try doing things they actually like'.

Comments

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

On the plus side, if they're like our son, when they inevitably break/lose their Favorite Thing, you can give it to them as a present again and again and they don't mind at all. Poor kid can't wait to get a new Spongebob Pinball Machine.

Honestly, as frustrating as Tom can be, our main problem with Christmas is keeping him from opening every package in sight, even the ones that aren't his. We accept this as an improvement from his early years when we had to psychically aid him in opening them at all.