The feast of the Nativity approaches, and with it, anxiety.

How will your family get along when everyone’s home? How will the kids do when you travel to visit relatives? Will you be welcomed at the church when you finally get a chance to go? For families with special needs, these questions are layered with the weight of additional needs.

Holiday Tips for Making Christmas Easier for Special Needs Families

This week I’m sharing what I’ve learned from teaching and living with persons with special needs. Bookmark and share these best practices for home, travel, and church with special needs during the holidays.

THE GIFT OF 12 DAYS

Spread out gifts over 12 Days. Instead of subjecting sensitive family members -and let’s face it, lots of other folks, too!- to the overwhelm that comes from gift-opening sprees, give only one gift per day to each person. This will allow all family members and guests the extra processing time they need to enjoy each gift. It also allows for experience gifts, such as board games, museum trips, and shows, to stand out in a day. Families who need more time to recover from experiences will also appreciate the lower emotional, physical, and sensory load of spreading out activities.

Pick services to attend that are not as crowded, or arrange away spaces with the church (see more below about Away Spaces) before attending. Many churches have a bride room or a spare room where you might step away to calm and tend yourself or family members. Ask ahead of time to make sure that the space is available. Churches can help by advising ushers or greeters to help make those spaces available to families who need them.

If you have time off over the holidays, consider offering a few hours of your time to a family with special needs. Maybe you are able to help care for a family member so a parent or caregiver can rest or shop for a few hours. Maybe you can run an errand or wrap presents for or with them. Your presence might be one of the best presents you can give during the 12 days of Christmas.

PROVIDE STRUCTURED TIME TOGETHER WITH RITUALS AND ROUTINES

Many types of special needs affect social communication. To include everyone most easily, it helps to plan for structured time together. These might include board games appropriate to developmental level, puzzles, ritualized meals, coloring, stringing popcorn, or following a star around the yard to search for the Christ child.

Games with low barriers to entry include cooperative games like our family’s favorite, Obstacles (affiliate link), or matching games such as the Nativity matching game you can print from the file below. If you happen to have a family of sensory-seekers who don’t mind loud noises, this nerdy cooperative game Spaceteam (affiliate link) has a lower entry level for pragmatic communication combined with higher vocabulary (particularly fun for many people with ADHD or autism).
Tea or cocoa or cookies and milk: Routines that are always the same, such as sitting down to tea or cocoa or having cookies and milk, can reduce stress for family members with special needs. Predictability is especially helpful for people who have challenges affecting transitions. Pour tea/cocoa and serve in the same order at the same places at the table each day. Serve cookies and milk at the same time and in the same place each day. The more variables you can eliminate through consistency, the more accessible you make your gathering.

AWAY SPACES

Many people with special needs will flourish if they have a small, separate space for calm and relaxed routines such as building with LEGO/DUPLO/wooden blocks, reading, or listening to music or silence.

If you’re spending the holidays away, ask about setting up a special Christmas closet as away space at relatives house. If the guest room has a large closet, for instance, see if you can borrow a string of Christmas lights and some large cushions to transform the space into a small reading/quiet nook.
Consider setting up a permanent away space in a closet as a gift to your autistic family members (Narnia or other literary theme optional!). In my house, we have a few closets set up this way–we even have a twin bed set up in a napping closet for when people need to recover from allergy exposure or too much light. You could also take the idea of a prayer closet literally and set up a closet as a small prayer corner.

KEEP FOODS SIMPLE

Share simple, familiar foods for comfort rather than focusing on novelty or show. Many people on the autism spectrum or with a variety sensory differences have trouble with new smells, textures, and colors in foods.

If your family member or guest suffers from food allergies or restrictions, make sure to have several safe options for them to eat.

If your family member or guest needs special equipment to eat, such as bowls, curved spoons or bendy straws, make sure to have them on hand and at the table for group meals.

If your family member uses a G-tube or other special feeding system, practice giving thanks for nourishment and the means to provide it. Plan your schedule with the rest of the family or guests so that feeding time is not loud or stressful or overlapping a fun time. If you’re hosting, consult your guests so that your group plan considers feeding time for people with special feeding needs.

Consider putting your display efforts into table setting rather than changing foods.

Presenting safe and familiar foods in pretty dishes or with lovely table arrangements can make a meal feel special while still including everyone.
If you have guests with visual impairments, they might still enjoy touching roses at their place setting. When I have hosted blind friends in the past, I clipped a few flowers with different textures to put on their napkins so that they could share the joy of the decorations.

BOUNDARIES AND BARRIERS

Learn and share attention cues.

Explain to guests or relatives how to get your family member’s attention and to not move the person as a first resort or without consent. It’s important to respect the person with a disability, neurodivergence, or impairment and not to treat that person like a prop rather than a human.
Each person may express attention differently, so it’s important to let others know what the signs are. Some persons might pause and turn their face toward you without making eye contact, for instance. Others might have a speech output device phrase or a cut out symbol to indicate that they’re listening. Share the signs of attention to prevent misunderstanding.
Talking to someone who isn’t hearing you either due to impairments or attention difference can lead to frustration for all members of the interaction. Establish attention cues at the beginning of visits to help further communication. This might mean a hand signal to ask someone to engage a hearing aid, coming alongside someone into a field of vision, using an alternative communication system, using sign language, or speaking at different volumes.

Provide hearing barriers.

The sounds of groups and background noise can be overwhelming for many persons with sensory differences. Provide noise-blocking earmuffs such as these (affiliate link), or have different activity zones with lower and louder noise levels to help everyone self-regulate. If you have several guests or family members with earmuffs, you can even provide Christmas stickers so that they can decorate their pair. You might also incorporate a “Quiet Zone” or “Silent Night” sign into your decor in order to let everyone know about the quiet area of your home or gathering.

SENSORY SOOTHING

Provide for sensory needs such as rocking or jumping.

One of the biggest helps for sensory soothing is the back and forth motion of rocking chairs or swings.
If you have space in your home or church for rocking chairs, make them accessible during holiday travel times. They will help ease anxiety for people in your environment.
Consider packing a folding camp rocking chair or an over-the-door playground swing (affiliate links) if you travel to visit relatives without access to swings or rockers.

Provide or bring along tactile options like kinetic sand, especially if you’re in a hands-off environment. Some relatives have lots of nice things on display to look at but not touch.

Easily available multi-sensory options:

Cutting out cookies or salt dough ornaments.
Kinetic sand or traditional sandboxes.
Snow or fake snow play. (Link leads to several fake snow options.)
Holiday scented bubbles or bubble bath.
Touching the Christmas tree while decorating.
Watching Christmas lights.

TEACHING THE CHRISTMAS STORY

Whether you’re teaching at home or at church, use the whole room and whole bodies to teach. Many people with differences in sensory processing think best when they can move their bodies and think with their hands.

Churches can consider having sensory-friendly Sunday school options such as plastic bins of cracked corn (or popcorn kernels if you can’t get to an animal feed store) when talking about the animals at the Nativity, and be prepared to allow children to play with it during the entire lesson. [I will update this page soon with a free Accessible Sunday School video lesson using cracked corn!]
Have faux sheep skin for everyone to touch or for children to lie on when you talk about the Nativity story. Sensory anchors are huge attention boosters!
Encourage sign language for light or stars and encourage happy sounds that can be made by children with speech challenges for talking about a room full of animals.

Use sturdy Nativity sets to teach the Christmas story. Some customs you might include:

Set up the Nativity set at the beginning of Advent, either all together or adding an element each week.
Hide baby Jesus until Christmas Eve. Put him somewhere in the room and have the children hunt for Jesus before bed.
Move the wise men around the house for each of the 12 days, so that they arrive at the manger on the 12th Day of Christmas.

Alternative Communication:

Work with your speech therapist or your software system to add the elements needed to tell the Nativity story into the speech output device or AAC system of your family member. You don’t want to get to Christmas Eve and find that your family member cannot say, “angel” with his/her device.
Download the free Visual Nativity Card PDF printable below (or print from image above). You can use the full page as a choice board or cut out the cards for sequencing or matching with the written words. You can also print two copies, cut out the cards, and use them to play a memory matching game.Nativity Visual Vocabulary

Include everyone into the group by means of centering activities rather than expectations to sit still and listen. Centering activities that create a group include kinetic sand bins, sensory bins, and giant playsilk or parachute play.

Here’s an example of my family centering with a playsilk:

You can also modify a playsilk or parachute in order to include persons with mobility challenges. When I taught a children’s choir, one of our singers was a boy with cerebral palsy who could not hold onto silks with his hands. I tied or sewed hair bands and scrunchies to all of our group silks so that he was attached to the group activity. This modification also helps children with dyspraxia from Down Syndrome, autism, and other motor coordinating challenges.

Tie or sew a large elastic headband or scrunchy onto a playsilk. The playsilk can then be attached to a mobility device or a person’s arm, depending on their preference, so that they can participate in the group activity.

I hope these ideas will help you have more joy and less stress this Christmas season. See my Advent with Autism Guide for more tips.

Share your tips in the comments. What helps your special needs family stay centered at Christmas?

Categories: advice, autism, christian, concrete thinking, encouragement, faith, family, holidays, instruction manual for my family, life lessons, Orthodox Faith, overcoming blocks, special needs child, spiritual formation, traditions, Uncategorized, vintage faith

Tagged: adhd, autism, Christmas, church, Down Syndrome, free game, free printable, holidays, hospitality, impairment, less stress, lessons, mobility challenge, more joy, relatives, spd, special needs, Sunday School, travel

His Eye Is On The Spectrum

Summer Kinard

Posted on November 27, 2018

God always meets us with love, whether we rise or fall.

“Do not worry, for the very hairs on your head are numbered.”

I remember the first time I came across that verse. I was fascinated, in awe. My mother was in school to be a hair stylist, and I was around hair culture every day. I remember sneaking my mother’s hair styling manequin and trying to count the hairs. I kept losing track!

Later, I remember telling children about this verse for the first time. There are some things that children know to be impossible: counting sand, stars, hairs, the number of times a sparrow drops to the ground to steal a crumb. We are small, and these things (stars excluded in actuality but not in appearance) are smaller, and we can’t keep track of them, no matter how much they catch our attention. But there’s a loving attention that can, and that makes us say, “Wow.”

For those of us who struggle with attention, this witness to the capacity of God is a comfort and a joy.

There are parts of scripture where I think Jesus hid little Easter eggs for autistics. I’m claiming the Apostle Nathaniel as one of us autistics, for instance, because he was without guile. Then there are Jesus’ really detailed and specific, concrete teachings about worry and anxiety.

Autistic people tend toward both worry and anxiety because of the burden of sorting so much input. We have to work hard to train our big, especially complex brains to pay attention to the things that are important to us. I’m in the process of teaching my older children these skills now, and I couldn’t help remembering this passage of scripture.

It’s not only knowing that God loves us in a general sense that helps to calm the too-much feelings. It’s knowing that God cares about the little details of us and our days. Jesus blessed children who probably had grains of sand under their little fingernails. They might have been damp and grubby. He noticed them as they were. He noticed the smallest seeds that were taking over the garden. He could spot a fig in a canopy of leaves. More importantly, he taught that the God Who Sees that had been known in the stories of the Old Testament is still the God Who Sees in the New Testament.

The remarkable consistency of God’s character puts us at ease.

He looks after us and wants to hear our silence and our concerns. He looks after us and makes sure that we are always met with love, whether we rise or fall.

Categories: autism, christian, concrete thinking, conversation, encouragement, faith, Uncategorized

Tagged: Bible, God who sees, peace with autism

The Discipline of Weeping

Summer Kinard

Posted on October 11, 2018

When I was born, and no one knows this, A tear fell from Jesus_ judging eye From the cross Onto my infant tongue There to suckle me until I Could eat His flesh.

I wrote those words over 20 years ago when I began to reflect on the way Christ came to me in mercy from my earliest childhood. I haven’t been able to shake that image, through all these years, of the saving gift of tears. I read about tears in spiritual writings. I have experienced the gift of tears when I have needed healing or repentance. I practice tears.

I am in many ways still a beginner, but I have learned a little about the discipline of weeping:

If you’re going to clear your eyes of false reality, you have to learn to cry in truth.

The fathers advise us to weep for our sins. Yet, most of us don’t spontaneously burst into tears of repentance or ecstasy with God.

That’s because we have to practice in order to cry for the right reasons.

When I completed 5 years of intensive study of the fathers and was taking my exam for my Master of Theology degree, I answered the questions put to me and then said, “It’s as though the whole universe is filled with the tears of Christ, and those tears are joy and healing to us.” My good-natured professor and mentor smiled and nodded and asked me to explain another complicated view of theological anthropology in the 4th and 5th Century Fathers.

We cry and follow the tears till they become a stream flowing toward the river of God, and we step into the very suffering of Christ in the water of baptism.

We cannot escape difficult experiences through lofty language. We have to go through trials. We have to sit by the hospital beds. We have to repeat a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times, until the words pouring out of us awake the words in the little one we are teaching, “I am thirsty. I want milk.” We have to find hands to hold through the hard parts of walking, labor, lifting, revealing, waiting, releasing. Sometimes our hands are cups of trembling.

There is little one can do sometimes but stand by and weep. There are times in special needs life when my weakness is crushing. I am so exhausted and overwhelmed that I cannot control myself, or I can control myself and it doesn’t help anyone anyhow. I fail or excel, and yet, I am only the witness to grace, not it’s receptacle. That’s how it feels, anyhow, before the tears come.

But when I practice weeping, I know that even I can have a myrrh-streaming heart. The waters of the earth and above the heavens, all sanctified, so holy and sometimes so remote in the dry land of my broken sadness, break through to me in the simple act of crying out to God.

“O Lord my God, I cried to you, and you have healed me,” the psalmist says.

The healing is the connection between me and the women standing at the foot of the Cross, and of Christ himself, and of the waters he blessed at his coming: waters of the womb, waters of the rivers, of the sea, of the table, of weeping, of the grave, of the morning. These holy waters likewise bless my tears by connecting me back to the God who is with us. It was his tears I entered when I was baptized.

Christ makes holy thewaters of the womb, waters of the rivers, of the sea, of the table, of the grave, of the morning.

They have never been far away from me, these waters of grace, but I cannot always see them for all the lies I set daily before my face. Truth and weeping go hand in hand. Grief is a great clarifier of joy.

I have heard and sometimes experience tears of joy, but they only came with practice.

Practice weeping in the night. Cry over any sorrow, but cry to God. Practice weeping when you’re in the car alone, or in the shower. Cry in frustration or anxiety, but cry to God. Practice weeping right in front of the faces of injustice. Cry in anger, but cry to God. Practice weeping in your lullabies. Cry in love, but cry to God. Practice weeping in the places you’d rather not be. Cry in sorrow or regret, but cry to God. Practice weeping in the kitchen. Cry for help or worry, but cry to God. Practice weeping in your garden or in church or at the table. Cry for laughter and joy, but cry to God.

In this way, your tears will wash away fear. In this way, you will be ready when it’s time to rejoice.

Categories: advice, christian, discernment, encouragement, faith, Friday Faith Talk, gratitude, life lessons, overcoming blocks, special needs child, spiritual formation, Uncategorized

Tagged: asceticism, crying, holy joy, holy sadness, mercy, not alone, special needs parenting, spiritual discipline, sweetness, tears

Autistic Brain Owner’s Manual 1: Make Yourself At Home

Summer Kinard

Posted on May 15, 2018

When we think of physical impairments and disabilities, we assume that the home environment needs to be altered to remove handicaps for daily living. The same is true for neurodivergences like autism.

You will be able to self-regulate best when your home environment supports the sensory input you need for balance. That’s why the first section of your brain’s owner’s manual is to Make Yourself at Home.

I’ve written before about sensory diets, and I will post a fuller guide to an Autism Accessible Home soon. But for the purposes of getting a handle on your brain’s needs, here are the most important areas to address to give yourself (and/or your family members) the best opportunities for self-regulation:

Movement. Whether you choose to have an over-the-door swing, a room swing, a yard swing, a pull-up bar, a Swedish ladder, an old-fashioned water bed, a rocking chair, an exercise ball, a balance board, or any combination of those, you will need to fill your body’s need for soothing movements in order to allow the parts of your brain to build the best connections and to coordinate well.
Lighting. You’ll need to find the lighting levels you prefer for different needs (exciting or relaxing) and be able to adjust them according to the time of day and your needs. Here are some ways to regulate lighting: Lamps, warm spectrum or full-spectrum light bulbs, dimmer switches, color and brightness adjustable LED rope lights, fairy (Christmas) lights, photo lamp kits, bubble lamps, lava lamps, candles, glow sticks, glow in the dark paint, fiber optic lamps, sunglasses, rose colored glasses, stained glass, sheers, blackout curtains.
Deep Pressure. This type of pressure gives your joints and fascia input that helps you feel centered and safe. Here are some of the ways to get the deep pressure you need: weighted blankets, heavy backpacks, weighted lap pads, weighted vests, sitting between couch cushions, bean bag chairs, jumping into bean bags or crash pads, hugs, therapeutic deep pressure such as shoulder and joint compressions, trampolines, exercise bands, having a dog or cat on your legs or lap, holding books on your lap, heavy quilts or blankets or pillows over legs or feet, body socks, lying on your belly, doing push ups, leg lifts, and other calisthenics, pushing yourself around on a floor scooter, soaking in a deep bath, swimming.
Touch. Tactile input can help us to learn a lot about our environment, but it can also be very overwhelming. Soft fabrics, especially natural fabrics, are often more pleasant for autistics to touch. I recommend removing tags as soon as you have made sure that new clothing fits well and that you’ll keep it. For the home, sheepskin rugs, silk pillow covers, velvet or velour pillow covers, and corduroy items can add textural input without costing too much. It’s very important that autistic people be allowed truly designated personal space where they can let down their guard and focus all of their attention without unpredictable touch. (More on attention in Thursday’s post.) Some autistic people seek touch, and some largely avoid it. Self-regulation is the goal, whichever direction one’s preferences lie, so safe, predictable spaces are important. If separate rooms aren’t an option, cubby-like spaces such as indoor tents, the space under loft beds, and wingback chairs can give the needed cocoons that regulate touch.
Sound. It’s important not to send sound-sensitive people into shutdown or meltdown modes by overwhelming them with loud, sudden, or annoying sound. Several members of my autistic family are sound sensitive. We have a central rack of noise-cancelling earmuffs in our house, and each of us uses them at least once a week. I also like to institute a quiet classical music part of each day where other background noise is muted or minimized. White noise such as recordings of the ocean can also be soothing, especially at night. If you cannot control the ambient noise level in your home, you can lower your exposure to it using earmuffs and white noise or quiet, relaxing music.
Safety. Along with the other areas, a sense of safety is vital for self-regulation. This can be as simple as making sure that you have locking doors and as complex as learning to de-escalate emotional responses to lower the tension in relationships. Safety also requires that bodily and emotional boundaries are in place and respected by everyone in the household. Some of the ways we stay safe are with deadbolts on our outside doors to prevent intrusions and eloping, combination locks on our backyard gates to prevent eloping (we have a nonverbal 4 year old who has not developed a sense of danger yet and who elopes). We keep the keys to the deadbolts out of reach of the doors, high up on the walls, and accessible to the adults and oldest child in the house in case of emergencies. We teach bodily and relational boundaries from infancy, and we make sure that everyone in the family knows that surprises are ok, but secrets are not ok. We have also made a point to visit our neighbors and give them contact cards with the photo of our son who elopes, so that we’re not the only family looking out for him just in case he elopes. The cards read AUTISM ALERT and include his photo and name, our names and phones and locations, and, “If you find me wandering…” instructions. If you’re an adult with autism, safety can also include having someone to contact every day via text or private message or phone call or in person, so that you have someone looking out for you, too.

I will go into more detail and provide a customizable checklist in my free Autism Accessible Home guide, coming soon to this site. In the meantime, share in comments how you arrange your home to help regulate your sensory needs.

Make sure to follow this blog to see the entire series on the Autistic Brain Owner’s Manual. Follow my Facebook page for live videos demonstrating how I put these tips into practice in our autistic family life.

Part Two of this series.

Categories: autism, concrete thinking, encouragement, instruction manual for my family, overcoming blocks, Uncategorized

Tagged: adhd, autism, executive function, hacking your brain, life hacks, life lessons, neurodivergence, sensory processing disorder

Patron Saints of Autism

Summer Kinard

Posted on May 10, 2018

For those of us who ask the help of saints in our daily lives, one of the first questions that comes along with an autism diagnosis/recognition is, “Who is the patron saint of autism?”

As far as I know, there are no official patron saints of autism. Yet, I can attest to the help and intervention of several saints in our autistic lives. Here are some of the saints that have made themselves known to us as helpers for autistic Christians.

Holy Theotokos. Sometimes it’s easy to read past important parts of scripture, like when the educated people of the time were surprised at how much Jesus knew when he had not studied in the temple or gotten the best education of his day. But his mother had studied in the temple, and she taught her son. Of course, when you’re talking about Jesus, you’re also talking about a lot of divine revelation. But there is also the human mother whose youth before the angel appeared was dedicated to the study of scripture and prayers. The Mother of God is also mother to us all, parents and kids alike. She prays for us and can help us with our anxieties and fears and with guidance in teaching and therapeutic living.
St. Anthony the Great. When my youngest son’s profound cognitive delay was first diagnosed, my son did not even have an idea that communication or language were possible. I remember looking at the paper work that declared my son’s abilities to be less than first percentile, and I immediately thought of St. Anthony. St. Anthony was taught to read by angels. I went to my icon wall in the kitchen near where I was standing and asked God to help my son and help us to teach him. Then I specifically asked that St. Anthony would pray for him, that my son would learn by divine intervention the same way that St. Anthony had been taught to read. Since I thought of language as reading at that time, I even asked that the saint would come and teach my son to read. One week later, my two year old son wrote the word “Hodegetria” on the magnet board with his little letters. It means, “She who shows the way,” and it’s the name of an icon of the Holy Theotokos holding Jesus and gesturing toward her son. We took a photo because we were astonished and thought we might be imagining it at first. Then, a couple of weeks later, our boy wrote Down Stairs Go on the board with his magnets. He could read and spell.
St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco. This beloved modern saint has reached out to our family often. We ask him for help in forming helpful connections in our brains and in helping with speech and language processing delays. He, too, was slow of speech, and I think his great love for us helps us a lot.
St. Nathaniel (AKA Bartholomew) the Apostle. When we first meet Nathaniel, Jesus calls him an Israelite in whom there is no guile. Guilelessness is one of the hallmarks of autism, and I am encouraged to have this Apostle’s prayers for helping us train our attention towards God’s love and for helping us navigate a world that is friendlier to lies than truth.
St. Panteleimon the Unmercinary Physician. While all of the Holy Unmercinaries are helpful, St. Panteleimon has reached out with his mercy. He was known for healing both the body and soul by the love of Christ and the best medicine of his day. We ask him for help to know which supports to implement and for healing and forming connections across our different bodily and spiritual systems.
St. Anastasia the Defender Against Potions, or the Healer. St. Anastasia is one of the saints who helps you with your problems and also has your back. She helps to defend us against malice and gossip or people who would attack our vulnerability. She was known for taking care of the Christians in prison who were going to be martyred. She is not afraid of anything, and she can bring comfort and lower anxiety. If you’ve noticed a theme here, yes, anxiety is a big challenge in autistic life.
St. Nektarios of Aegina. When my twins were a few months old, I had their little cribs right next to my bed. One night I woke up to feed my older twin. While I was feeding him, I looked over in his crib and saw an icon of St. Nektarios and had a strong sense that he was praying for us. I made the sign of the cross over myself and the babies and blew a kiss toward the icon in veneration (but veneration where you’re not going to risk waking up twins in the middle of the night). The next morning, I suddenly remembered that we didn’t have an icon of St. Nektarios. But I bought one right away! Since then, we have felt his love and guidance and prayers in our lives every day. He’s the patron saint of our therapeutic homeschool. In the broader Orthodox Christian world, St. Nektarios often helps people suffering from epilepsy as well as other ailments and conditions. We ask him to guide us and to help our minds, bodies, and spirits work together to love God and to give us a sound mind. Being in your right mind is a gift of the Holy Spirit that is open to autistic Christians, too, and this saint helps us toward that fullness.

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Do you have patron saints to add to the list? Share your stories in the comments!

I just signed a contract with Ancient Faith Publishing to write Of Such is the Kingdom: A Practical Theology of Disability. Follow my blog for updates. If you have a story of welcoming or being welcomed into the life of the Orthodox Church while living with a disability or impairment, please consider sharing your story with me {Share Your Story}.

Categories: advice, autism, christian, discernment, encouragement, faith, Friday Faith Talk, instruction manual for my family, life lessons, Orthodox Faith, special needs child, spiritual formation, traditions, Uncategorized, vintage faith

Tagged: actually autistic, asd, Asperger's, autism, autistic, Catholic, Christian, devotion, Orthodox, patron saints, prayer for autism, prayer for autistic Christians, spd

A Sensory Diet Checklist for Your Church

Summer Kinard

Posted on January 8, 2018

When I first came across the term “sensory diet,” I was skeptical. How would touching my food make a difference in weight loss? I think I even rolled my eyes a little at my son’s first OT (occupational therapist), thinking she was one of those people who thought babies should diet.

It’s okay to laugh.

A sensory diet isn’t a weight loss program. It’s a way to describe the activities and stimuli you provide for yourself or your special needs child to help regulate and integrate your physical (and therefore emotional and cognitive) experience in the world. The professionals at THIS LINK describe it much more fully and clearly. (Bookmark that link! It’s awesome.)

A Sensory Diet Checklist for Your Church

In your home, a sensory diet might include heavy work options like pushing a lawn mower, pulling wet laundry from a machine, or lifting a trash bag, as well as soothing movements like rocking in a rocking chair, swinging, or bike riding. But what about your church?

Ever notice that children tend to melt down more often in church than at home? Unmet sensory needs are likely to blame. The sensory environment is likely extremely different.

We can help with sensory soothing at church by going through a sensory checklist for our churches. Here’s the Sensory Diet Checklist (linked above as well, because it’s one of the most useful links I’ve found). I encourage you to go through it and brainstorm opportunities in your church environment, rituals, and routines that meet the different areas of sensory needs.

Write down your list and share it with families and persons with special needs, the pastor or priest, Sunday school teachers, and other advocates.

Having ways to self-soothe and get sensory input in a “normal” way can make an amazing difference to one’s ability to stay engaged in a faith community.

Here are the additions I made to the sensory checklist relevant to my church. I share them in hopes that they’ll help you notice sensory diet opportunities in your faith community.

SAMPLE CHURCH SENSORY DIET

Heavy Muscle Work (Proprioceptive):

Carrying a church bag filled with books and quiet items
Pushing/pulling open the church door or Sunday school door
Weighted lap pad available in Sunday school
Big bear hugs with godfamily and special, trusted church friends
Pushing on the ground while kneeling
Altar boys carrying lanterns
Carrying heavy toy/activity in Sunday school
Lifting heavy service books/placing in or out of pew holder

Oral Motor (Working the Mouth):

Crunch snack in Sunday school class (we always have gluten free pretzels in my class)
Water in a quiet sippy bottle in church (with priest’s permission)
Kissing holy icons

Tactile (Touch):

Sunday school lessons with sensory bin elements (my Autism Friendly Sunday School lessons – coming soon – feature lots of hands-on options)
Dressup (Bible character clothes for classroom skits, fleece costumes for pageant)
Fleece and faux fur for lessons dealing with biblical animals (sheep)
Soft, all-cotton clothes for those with strong sensitivities, with less formal attire explained to priest/pastor ahead of time
Silk or cotton headscarf
Church bag items: squishies, velvet pouches, mermaid sequined notebooks, silicone spiky slap bracelets (see the Church Bag Tour)

Vestibular (Movement):

Making the sign of the cross over oneself
Prostrations
Metania (bowing and touching the floor during some prayers or before icons)
Standing on tip-toes and leaning for veneration of icons
Swaying while holding a child or swaying gently to the chanting
Sunday school lessons that have children act out big movements such as small and tall/reaching to sky

Download This Sample Church Sensory Diet Checklist Here:

Sensory Checklist for Your Church

Categories: autism, christian, faith, family, free giveaway, Orthodox Faith, overcoming blocks, places, special needs child, spiritual formation, Uncategorized, vintage faith

Tagged: asd, Asperger's, autism church, checklist, church, free download, free printables, Make your church accessible, occupational therapy, sensory diet, sensory needs, sensory processing disorder, spd, Sunday School

The Need For Silence

Summer Kinard

Posted on December 17, 2018

“I’ll pray for you.”

“Thank you.”

This interaction happens countless times each day among people of faith, and it is always good. But for years, I had some wrong ideas about prayer. For one, I thought they had to be done in a prescribed way in order to matter. For another, I thought that I had to be someone different for them to matter. And again – and trust me, this is only the beginning of a list of things I’ve gotten wrong – I thought I had to say something for prayer to matter.

One of the hard-won lessons I have learned in ten years of helping my communication-challenged children talk and communicate clearly is that the love of God is not hindered at all by our ability or inability to speak or behave the “right” way or to fit a mold. I thank God when my children speak clearly and behave well, but I have also thanked God through years of hours-long screaming meltdowns and prolonged silences that lasted into months or years.

Look, not all of us will talk well. But that has very little to do with holiness or even eloquence. Think of Moses! Think of the many saints with speech troubles! Think of the quiet bishop commended by St. Ignatius as an example! Think of Hannah, seemingly drunk as she prayed so fervently!

God is with each of us no matter what. No Matter What. Hold that truth along with the hands of your sleeping child. God is with you and the child. Love is in the room.

Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that the mystical Cloud of Unknowing is far removed from the uncertainties of parenting children with extra needs. That could only be true if God were far away. But here God is, with you now. You don’t know everything. You don’t even know how to pray beyond a few words, an outline of faith, that shapes your longing and directs your uncertainties back to the heart of God. Inquire of Lord — of course! Ask God for help — of course! Pray the prayers of the Church — of course! And then hush and let the quiet remind you of Who is near.

Disability is not a hindrance to prayer. It reveals the true nature of prayer. Part of the nature of humans and of God and of prayer is silence.

Today I want to unburden you temporarily of the obligation to speak. Just for a minute, or five minutes, or twenty, if you have it, be still and let yourself know that God is with you and loves you. Even if you cannot have quiet in your household, you can have silence. You can remember, for a moment, that you are held.

Silence gives you space to remember that the God who created you is restoring you. Only silence can answer the incomprehensible mercy of God with us. Silence is the “thank you” that speaks even when words are not possible.

Categories: christian, conversation, discernment, encouragement, faith, life lessons, special needs child, spiritual formation, Uncategorized

Tagged: autism, nonverbal, prayer, silence, special needs parenting

Mercy Cleanings

Summer Kinard

Posted on December 6, 2018

A few weeks ago, I traveled to Antiochian Village to attend the Ancient Faith Women’s Retreat. On the first morning, I went to the first talk with that morning’s Gospel repeating through my heart:

Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.”

Image from The Illuminated Gospel of St. Matthew by Oakwood Publications of Matthew 9: 9-13

The gospel had stuck in my craw that morning, stirring up the long weariness I had carried over my feelings of inadequacy in parenting. I sat myself down gingerly in front of the icon of the Theotokos, my failure smarting like a splinter I held out to the Holy Mother.

The icon was screen-printed and matte. There was no gold to catch my eye. Yet, the curve of the Theotokos’ fingers did catch my eye. She was supporting him. There was a quickness to the gesture that called out to me, reaching out to me with my sadness and frustration. I was quiet, waiting. My friend was speaking eloquently about cooking with and without oil. I suppose my mind was opened by the thought of oil and the closeness in Greek between the word for olive oil (elaiolado) and the word for mercy (eleos). Because it was then that I heard it:

One word, spoken in my heart, as though placed there with the gentle gesture of the Theotokos’ hand.

“Eleos.” Mercy.

I looked up at the icon and waited.

“Pour eleos out on your children,” I heard, and I saw myself bending over to pick up one of the hundreds of daily messes the children pepper around the house. Only this time, I saw it differently. My hand, when I bent over, was like a spigot of the water of grace, pouring out over my home, over my children. “Clean up after your children without bitterness or complaint. Pour out eleos on them.”

Suddenly I understood that morning’s Gospel reading. “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.”

I had tried to be a good parent, but in that area, I had gotten it all wrong. Sacrifice means doing X in order to receive Y. It’s transactional, and like any transaction, sacrifice sets one up for anger, disappointment, and frustration.

Mercy is pure gift. Not only that, but mercy is inexhaustible.

We are taught over and over in articles and well-meaning advice to sacrifice for our children. That’s because sacrifice keeps us in a position of control and subjects us to the judgments of others who believe themselves to be in control. Very few articles will advocate for mercy, because mercy always points to God as God.

Mercy is what humans fear, not judgment.

Don’t sacrifice your relationship with your children on the altar of public opinion. Don’t sacrifice your relationship with your children in order to try to get them to imitate your behavior. When you have special needs children, cleaning up after them is not a matter of teaching them (because they probably will not follow your example for many years if at all) or living up to the standards of other people (because they aren’t your God) or living up to the life you imagined without your current challenges (because God meets us where we are, not waiting to meet us in a perfectly neat and decluttered dream home).

You will only be offering sacrifice if you try to pick up the toys and the books and the body messes and the food and the drink in order to win favor or approval or respect. You will become bitter and grumpy, and you’ll probably provoke the children to be less engaged and more messy. You will be sacrificing yourself and your sanity and your relationships to prove to God that you don’t need His help. Wait. What? Yes, when you sacrifice yourself, you forget that God isn’t asking you to do so. God asks one thing of us: to be merciful as He is merciful.

Pick up after your children in order to pour mercy on them. Do it because you love them, not to assuage the prickling temptations of comparison and shame.

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I came home from the retreat with a heart full of the joy of companionship and plenty to reflect upon. I was surprised to find that the messes didn’t make me angry. I stepped over them or cleaned them, depending on what else I was doing. Each time I bent over to pick up paper shreds or clothing or to wipe up a spill or throw away trash or to sort layers of mess that someone had made in a moment of sensory overload, I thought, “Eleos.”

I began to feel peace in my home – not always freedom from conflict – but peace. Then, after a few days, I noticed the children bending down next to me to pick up. I was amazed. I could count on my fingers the number of times the children helped me clean up before this! But they did it again the next day, and the next.

The children of joy have decided to clean the floor everyday by skating around on baby wipes. They’re having fun in this photo. Two of their brothers joined in right after I took the picture.

Then they started coming up with ideas of their own. They asked me if they could have baby wipes to skate around the living room to clean the floor. One child started, then three others joined.

I don’t understand it, the way I don’t understand any joyful surprise. But it’s true: having mercy on my children seems to have spread mercy to them. Now they’re having mercy on me, too.

I share this in hopes of lightening your burdens, not to turn mercy into another type of sacrifice. It wasn’t when the children began to join me in cleaning that my burden lifted, but when I began to treat cleaning as a mercy. I know that some of our children — some of my children — will not start cleaning up just because of a change of heart. Some of them might not have the ability to do so, and some of them might not understand. But even in this small way, in the tending of the ground beneath our feet, there is nothing to stop grace entering their souls.

Have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Categories: advice, christian, discernment, encouragement, faith, family, life lessons, Messy Parenting, Orthodox Faith, overcoming blocks, special needs child, spiritual formation, Uncategorized

Tagged: autism, executive function, exhausted mother, homemaking, how to clean with special needs children, mercy, messy home, sacrifice for your children, what does it mean to have mercy

Finding Focus in a Neurodiverse Homeschool Day

Summer Kinard

Posted on October 24, 2018

Here are my Top Ten Tips Plus One on how to focus your children’s attention.

Don’t forget to click through to the shopping lists at the end for more ideas and how-to’s!

Rocking and swinging make for great calming effects and full body-brain coordination.
Balance boards and balance stools/balls allow for movement while learning in a room with others. If you use a balance board or other tool that makes a clunky sound, you might prefer to do so over a square of carpet liner or foam kitchen mat.
Calisthenics. All of those dorky looking floor exercises from the 70s and 80s actually do great things to your nervous system. Much of our attention and emotional and sensory regulation happens through our bodily movements. Taking five to ten minutes at the beginning or ending of the day to run through some simple floor stretches can help a lot. If you’d like to learn specific exercises that might impact your child’s ability to focus and coordinate, you might be interested in this online workshop on Retained Primitive Reflexes. (I’m not affiliated at all, nor do I receive recompense for sharing this resource. I’m finding the information helpful in my family, though, and I wanted to make sure others know about it.)
Walking music. Transition into and out of activities with music. At church, people often do this, either with processional/recessional hymns or the Trisagion. Add transition music into your routine.
Group movement games. Little Bunny Fu-Fu, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, I’m A Little Teapot, Wiggle Waters/Still Waters, Musical Chairs, The Hokey Pokey, The Macarena, Keyboard demo dance-off, Family music playlist dance songs.
Take frequent 2-5 minute breaks for movement or play. The play can be a short tablet video game break or silly music video, even. The goal is to make it a low-stakes, entertaining moment that the child will enjoy. Pay attention to your child’s attention span. Watch his or her cues, and begin offering short breaks about a minute before the child begins to lose focus. Gradually, by reliably offering breaks, you will be able to increase your child’s focus during attentive times AND lengthen his or her attention span. This will require baby steps of 15 second adjustments per day as long as progress continues, but that’s a potential gain of 20 to 30 minutes attention span in six months. Attention is the end game and the long game with neurodiversity. Plan for it.
Deep pressure through jumping or being squeezed. If you don’t have a crash pad, hay bales, trampoline, floor mattress, or snow drift to jump on, don’t worry. Squeezing pressure can come through lying on the belly, big hugs (with permission –sometimes kids can need pressure but be touch sensitive), carrying a heavy backpack, using a weighted blanket, weighted lap pad, or a rice sock/therapeutic neck wrap (either homemade or like the one on the sensory regulating wish list I put together). If you decide to use heavy objects for deep pressure, limit the time to 30 minutes at a time and keep the weight at 10% of the child’s body weight.
Coziness. I know that many cultures have words for coziness that include candles, warm drinks, and blankets. Those things are lovely but optional. I mean to evoke the year-round feel of a burrow. Our nervous systems are happy when we feel safe, and little mammals like to be tucked into tents, blanket forts, bed caves, and fluffy bean bags. When we feel safe and cozy, our anxiety-producing limbic systems calm down so that we can focus.
Mood lighting. This might mean bright white light, warm white light, small lamps, color-controled LED bulbs, twinkle lights, or varying portable lights for small spaces. It’s best to have a few levels and colors of lights at your disposal so that you can find which lighting calms or focuses your child and help them have both “on” time and down time.
Soothe senses with textures rather than moving parts. If your child prefers to use his/her hands while working or listening, provide textural input from toys such as kinetic sand, silicone-based toys, yarn crafts, and fabrics. Some children will be able to knit and listen. Some might enjoy having a silicone pop toy or bracelet. Others might want a sequined or velvet cloth to touch while they pay attention.
Make social thinking and attention building part of your curriculum. By all means, build in self-sustaining habits! But also remember: Attention is a skill that can be built! Use my Autistic Brain Owner’s Manual for tips on self-management skills relevant to neurodiverse persons. If you want to take things slower and add a few small activities at a time, I highly recommend The OT Toolbox. Join her mailing list for wonderful resources as well. (Also not affiliated, but I find the strategies SO helpful!) I also highly recommend the curricula at the Social Thinking website (no affiliation), and I’ve linked my favorite resource in the lists below.

If you’re looking for equipment ideas that you can purchase online, I’ve put together this helpful shopping list (affiliate link) or this Idea List (not affilate). Read more about the items I selected in the notes on the lists.

What would you add? Let us know in the comments!

Categories: advice, autism, concrete thinking, curriculum, encouragement, faith, family, homeschool, life lessons, overcoming blocks, teacher and writer, Uncategorized

Tagged: accessible home, adhd, autism, focus aids, homeschool, homework, neurodiverse, resource guide, spd, strategies, tips, top ten

Headcovering Because of the Angels

Summer Kinard

Posted on October 9, 2018

Why I cover my head as a form of devotion.

There are lots of reasons that women wear hats or scarves or veils. Some people wear them because they want to promote a culture of modesty. Some wear them to identify with a group. Some wear them from obedience. (Obedience can be a shortcut to wisdom if you obey someone wise.)

I cover my head because of power. It’s part of the uniform of my rank in God’s service. I serve the Lord God of Hosts. Hosts is the English translation of Sabaoth, which is feminine plural. That’s right. Every Sunday around the world, we share the Seraphic hymn, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabaoth.”

Well, you might say, grammar is tricky. Maybe there’s some unknown reason that in this one instance, God’s hosts are written in the feminine plural rather than in the inclusive masculine plural. I believe that there are certainly layers of meaning. But one of the meanings is clear to me: The God of the hosts of heaven is leading women.

This isn’t a radical feminist idea. I have heard from several priestmonks, spiritual fathers whose wisdom I cherish, who have told me that mothers are strong soldiers in spiritual war.

But now what does this have to do with headcovering?

I wear a headcover as part of my uniform in the spiritual war.

Yes, we’re all meant to put on the armor of God, which includes the helmet of salvation. But there’s that extra tidbit for us women in another place in St. Paul’s letters, advising women to cover their heads “because of the angels.”

Some people have wondered if this is meant to be a reference to the nefarious nephilim who took human wives. But let’s set aside our modern obsession with sex for a moment and look at the more probable meaning. Jews had for centuries sung the Seraphic hymn, which Christians had taken up by that time. The angels whose song we sing would be the first to leap to mind when women heard those words — because of the angels — and the women who were athletes for Christ, entering into Christ’s sufferings through baptism in full knowledge that they could be plucked from their communities and killed in the persecutions of Christians — Those women would have thought of the Lord of Sabaoth.

Because of the angels. Because of the hosts of God. Because we’re part of that host ever since we emerged from those waters and entered into that song.

We are surrounded at all times by a great cloud of witnesses and the holy angels of God. We are part of the hosts.

I cover my head to remind me of the mercy -and the strength- that I need to be part of that number.

Categories: christian, concrete thinking, discernment, encouragement, faith, spiritual formation, Uncategorized

Tagged: Corinthians, do Christians wear head covers, Paul, why does it say because of the angels, why I cover my head, women saints

Posted on December 5, 2018

Posted on November 27, 2018

For those of us who struggle with attention, this witness to the capacity of God is a comfort and a joy.

The remarkable consistency of God’s character puts us at ease.

Posted on October 11, 2018

That’s because we have to practice in order to cry for the right reasons.

We cry and follow the tears till they become a stream flowing toward the river of God, and we step into the very suffering of Christ in the water of baptism.

In this way, your tears will wash away fear. In this way, you will be ready when it’s time to rejoice.

Posted on May 15, 2018

You will be able to self-regulate best when your home environment supports the sensory input you need for balance. That’s why the first section of your brain’s owner’s manual is to Make Yourself at Home.

Posted on May 10, 2018

Posted on January 8, 2018

When I first came across the term “sensory diet,” I was skeptical. How would touching my food make a difference in weight loss? I think I even rolled my eyes a little at my son’s first OT (occupational therapist), thinking she was one of those people who thought babies should diet.

Having ways to self-soothe and get sensory input in a “normal” way can make an amazing difference to one’s ability to stay engaged in a faith community.

Posted on December 17, 2018

Posted on December 6, 2018

Posted on October 24, 2018

Here are my Top Ten Tips Plus One on how to focus your children’s attention.

Posted on October 9, 2018

I wear a headcover as part of my uniform in the spiritual war.

Because of the angels. Because of the hosts of God. Because we’re part of that host ever since we emerged from those waters and entered into that song.