With the holidays approaching, you may be feeling the stress from expectations, traveling, and trying to keep a routine. The holiday season will knock anyone off their game but can be especially challenging when your child thrives from a set routine. ADHD works best with a routine, but the holiday transition may throw it out of whack. Holidays are intended to be fun and exciting, but may not always feel that way. Let’s discuss some ways you can help your child with the transitions of upcoming holiday fun!
- Focus on setting clear expectations with your child, yourself, and extended family members. Your child cannot become a completely different person upon request, so focus on their strengths.
- They may also have a hard time vocalizing their feelings, but they may be very responsive to games – try incorporating feelings into a game.
- Have a conversation with your extended family prior to the gathering. This will give you enough time to answer any of their questions as well as letting them know every concern you will have. This will eliminate the day of stressful conversations about behaviors and everyone will be prepared.
- Set reasonable expectations for yourself as well. This may mean you have to learn to be a little more flexible with holiday transitions. Try to understand that everything on the itinerary will not go perfectly as planned.
- Try creating a new routine for the holidays! Your day to day schedule may not work for a holiday vacation. Try personalizing a schedule for the holiday break. It may help to keep breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the same time for the holidays. That will help avoid any possible hunger meltdowns that may occur. For long drives, bring snacks along the way to ensure they are sticking to the same snack time schedule.
- It may help to have a back-up plan just in case travel plans don’t go as planned. There may be hours of traffic or a flight delay. Here’s a tip: bring along extra snacks and travel board games! Turn that delay into a game session that will keep them distracted long enough to make it to your destination. It may help to have a couple of back-up plans to keep in mind for any holes in the schedule.
- Work with your child on setting a social goal. This will allow them to think about what they would like to achieve while on vacation. A goal could be: better listening skills while others are talking, play a new game with a family member, or let them choose a goal that will help them build confidence within themselves.
We hope these quick tips can make a difference in helping your ADHD child handle the transitions that occur during the holiday season!