Christmas Adventures

We have just completed the adventure of Christmas with family and friends.  Heading into these days, we were concerned about how Samuel would do.  While he is making progress with his speech, he is becoming more and more set in routine.  This is one way how his autism is becoming more evident even to the casual observer.  He had already been a little confused this week because he was not going to school.  Over the past couple weeks, he has seemed to get more comfortable with the idea that M,W,F, were school days.  Therefore, not having school has left him wondering if it was "Church Day" (aka: Sunday).

On Thursday night, we had Christmas Eve Service at our home church.  We tried to tell him that we were going to church and that there would be no "Worship and Wonder" (the children church program he participates in). He became confused right from the start.  We parked in a different location than on Sunday mornings and he instantly became anxious as we were walking inside.  I had to walk him to the other side of the church for him to accept that he would be going in the front door a different way.  Once we made it inside, he became more confused because April's parents had come to join us for the service (they are active in another church 30 minutes away).  While Cameron was incredibly excited that Nana and Papa had come to the service, Samuel was confused.  After a few minutes of processing what was going on he seemed to become more comfortable with the situation. Several songs were sang and things seemed to be going well. He even said "Amen" real loud following a prayer!  However, after about 25 minutes and as scripture started to be read he became restless.  He wanted to lay down on the carpet and then starting crawling underneath the pew into the row behind us.  As I was picking him up he started screaming, leaving me with no choice but to take him outside.  Eventually we did go back inside, but it took a while for him to calm down to a point where I felt we could.

April and myself had been discussing for several weeks about how busy Christmas day was going to be for our family.  The morning was scheduled to start at our house to play with all the items that Santa brought.  Then we were going over for lunch at my parents, where my brother's family, along with my uncle family would also be attending.  Following lunch there would be more gift time.  Mid-afternoon, we would leave my parents and go to April's parents for more Christmas activities, including supper with extended family down the road.  We were very concerned about how Samuel would handle all of this.  There were a few melt downs during the day, especially the later it got.  However, overall he handled it as well as we could have possibly expected.  By the end of the day, he was just ready to "go home".  As he repeated this statement over and over.

I wonder how much stimulation in one day can Samuel handle? Parents of older autistic children have shared that they struggle with these types of family tradition events that involve a lot of people gathered together.  I wonder if this will only get worse each passing year?  Please feel free to share ideas of how to help him cope with these types of activities.  He is a part of our family and while we want him to participate in these events, we also do not want to put him in positions that are incredibly uncomfortable for him.  This is just one of many questions that April and myself have as we move forward into 2016.

Thank you for taking the time to read.  I hope everyone has a great weekend!