Merry Christmas from the authors of ‘The Australian Autism Handbook’

by Benison O'Reilly on Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Seana is down the coast with her family and hopefully nowhere near a computer screen, so I will pass on Christmas greetings to our readers on her behalf.

I was planning a weightier contribution today, on the latest CDC prevalence data from the US, but I’ve decided that can wait until next week.

One of the many pleasures I’ve had this Christmas is the sight of the attractively decorated Christmas tree in my living room, surrounded by brightly wrapped presents.  When Joe was younger he would constantly remove decorations from the tree, attracted by their colour and shine. He’s always had a few visual stims. As a consequence our tree always looked like it had been decorated by someone who had consumed too much of the Christmas punch!  We also couldn’t put wrapped Christmas presents under the tree, because young Joe assumed all gifts were for him and would rip the paper off them just as quickly as I could wrap them.

Now the attraction of Christmas decorations has passed (although not completely the visual stims) and he can read the cards on the presents and know they are not for him.  However, I got him to help to wrap the presents for his younger cousins, so that he would know they weren’t toys that would interest him, just in case!

Progress with a child on the autism spectrum can be measured in many ways.

Anyway, we hope that you have a wonderful Christmas with your relative with an ASD and that 2010 is a good year for you all.

Best wishes,

Benison and Seana

Tags: acceptance, autism