With special permission I am sharing this story, written by a dear friend of mine. She speaks from her heart of the struggles through the holidays as a mom of a special needs children. She also covers some of the ways she is chosing to cope.
May you all see your blessings this Christmas & I hope this helps a few of you out there.
~Christy
“Merry Christmas!” cries the young woman as she smiles and waves good-bye to me, locking her cheery eyes on my tired and sullen countenance. I provide a courteous smile and hand gesture, and while turning away to walk back to the van, the word “whatever,” softly slips out of my mouth. To my surprise, the summary of all that I have been feeling and thinking the past few weeks has betrayed me in one single word. It now hangs in the air, cold and crisp like the weather. I certainly don’t check to see who was around me to hear my response, nor do I even care. My steps become labored as I continue the trek to the van, knowing that what awaits me at home is less pleasant than the short trip to the pharmacy. My foul mood settles in on me as I drive toward home. I remind myself that there are just three more days of this happiness pretense of the holidays and then we can all move on.
I would love to say that when I arrived home something wonderfully magical happened that brought me back to the joys of Christmas, and our family shared a beautiful holiday with genuine smiles and love. But that did not happen. In fact, just as I predicted, the kids were needy, Duane was trying to handle their chaos and also grumpy, and the to-do list only got longer. At that moment, I truly disliked Christmas. When did this happen? How did I get to the point where Christmas is something to endure, something to bare? I know that the holidays add a bit of stress and work within a family, but I don’t quite remember being this bitter about wrapping gifts and putting up a tree, along with all of the other “musts” over this season. At that point, I realized I needed to do some serious evaluation of what I truly wanted for me and my family at Christmas.
Over the years, I began to recognize some of the pieces of our holidays that were more pleasant than others, and those things that really were not all that important to me, but caused me a lot of stress. So, in the spirit of a healthier Christmas, I give you my thoughts on how I began coping through Christmas.
Taking time to think about what is important to you during the holidays.
For every nuclear family, there is a wider, broader family system that includes grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, or possibly foster parents, co-workers, and the like. No matter how much I tried to pare down Christmas, there are inevitably increased tasks and greater opportunity to attend parties, concerts, and other scheduled events. The goal then, was to take time to consider the most important aspects of this season that I wanted to hold onto. What is essential for me and my family to stay connected? How can I honor those pieces and create fond memories me and my children? For me, I need our nuclear family to have a Christmas breakfast together. It is the one moment of the season where we can sit down to connect, talk about gifts unwrapped, and plan ahead for the next few days of visits, etc. This takes a little bit of planning ahead of time, but for me, it is worth the extra trip to the grocery store.
Evaluating that to-do list and scratch out a few lesser important tasks.
My sister-in-law enjoys dressing up her children for the season. Their outfits are just plain adorable, and their kids love the ribbons in the hair, the grown-up tie and the shiny new shoes. The littlest one absolutely relishes in dresses and flowy clothes. It is a joy to see them at Christmas. My children however, have not appreciated the idea of dressing up, ever, which means they show up some years in sweats, jeans, or t-shirts. To me, they look just as great as my nieces and nephews. This is not an issue that I want to stress over, and honestly it saves us a little bit of money and time. I do make sure I recognize my sister-in-law’s efforts she puts into creating beautiful outfits for her children by “oohing” and “ahhhing” over how cute they really do look, while respecting my choice to relinquish this task.
Making temporary changes.
Let’s face it, our children bring a whole new level of Christmas excitement to our lives. And for those of us with children with extra-special needs, that kind of excitement isn’t necessarily what I was looking forward to. For many children, their needs will increase and decrease and increase again as they age, but at some point in time, life does slow down for them, and families can begin re-visiting some of the traditions that may have been set aside for a few years. In the meantime,I had to consider what changes I could make that honor me, my children, and my larger family system, without creating further stress down the line. Maybe the trip to Grandma’s is a must, but the timing of the visit could vary so that everyone leaves with good memories. In my family, it is a tradition for everyone to show up at the same time at Grandma’s with bags of gifts and lots of food. The presents are feverishly unwrapped, and in about 20 minutes, it’s all over. But, this is a nightmare for my youngest son. Chaos around him only produced chaos inside of him. It was clear that Daniel’s meltdowns were not fun for anyone and it was equally difficult to go against the family tradition of gift chaos, but we made the decision to go an hour early to my parent’s home so Daniel could open his gifts slowly, and with a quiet presence of just his parents, brother, and grandparents. Not only did Daniel benefit from this slight variation, but the whole family enjoyed their time together. Now that he is fourteen, we have been able to go back to “crazy” and participate with the rest of the family.
Making permanent changes.
For some families, Christmas is a constant reminder of something tragic that has happened to them or to their child. The holidays are no longer a time to look forward to, rather grief and sorrow encompass the darkening days and increasingly colder weather. For these families, making permanent changes to the holidays may be the best present they can give themselves. Some families have decided to use this time of year to go on vacation. Others have decided that gifts are no longer necessary; instead they help out at a homeless shelter, or give financially to a particular charity. If you are one of these families struggling to get through the holidays, remember to honor the sorrow and the grief you feel. Set aside time to pray, reconnect, sing, cry, or read where you will not be interrupted, whether it is just you, or whether it includes your family. The pain of your tragedy will never be completely gone, but families can learn to respect this incredible loss, and create new memories which include a different kind of joy.
May you be blessed with peace and joy this Christmas,
Sheri"
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