Dear Addie,
It’s our favorite week of the year! We are having some happy family time with everyone off work and school! Daddy is all grins (like a little kid in a candy shop) with anything holiday related, there’s laughter and joy in everything we do (except for seeing The Rise Of Skywalker apparently - Clara cried tears of intergalactic joy), your birthday is this week, and Christmas is finally here! Hooray! Praise the Lord!
With all the joy and love that comes with this week, it can also be wildly stressful and confusing for people navigating autism. For the families of people with autism, there’s a healthy dose of accepting that some traditions might be modified because it might be a little too much sensory overload to take everything in.
While the reason for the season is not lost on us - celebrating the birth of Jesus, traditions of the holiday hold true, and one of the most popular of them is opening presents on Christmas morning. Something most children eagerly await, and parents anticipate watching (no matter how old our babies get), but for families with autism, the experience can be different than most. Honestly, it can even be a bit sad, but perspective is a beautiful thing and can remind us of all the joy in it as well.
Allow me to explain.
You see Addie, the “matter of fact” way of thinking that you approach the world with, combined with the many sensory distractions in play, can make this “opening presents” experience a little overwhelming. This results in a 3 minute Christmas celebration before you burn out, and inevitably retreat back to your room where everything makes sense to you again. We actually have videos of you doing this at 1 and 2 years old - way before we understood the depth of this journey. You would come out, no excitable reaction and then remove yourself from the situation exiting to a room nearby.
As long as we can remember, this scenario has been our Christmas morning - Clara and Gabe opening presents, and then happily opening yours to present them to you not all at once, but slowly over the next several hours or even days. I don’t think you actually get all your gifts completely until well after New Year’s if I’m being honest.
The sounds, the commotion, the concept of savagely ripping open a package, I mean we tell you not to rip the pages in your books, but hey rip this to shreds?!?! You must think we have lost our minds Addie! We get it - it’s all a lot to take in, so we wait patiently for the day when you will eventually join us.
Kind of a common theme on this journey...waiting. But if there’s one thing that makes waiting worth it is how much more exciting and memorable “firsts” can be for you and us.
This year was no different, Gabe rushing in to wake us up, then we all make our way downstairs. You must’ve been super good because Santa brought you a brand new Wubble that you wasted no time face-planting into before happily dragging it up to your room. I jokingly said to Gabe “well that was a record, 30 seconds of Addie Christmas time!”
As we listened to you swinging in your room, bouncing off the wall, Clara and Gabe happily opened presents and we set yours in a pile for later on. In the midst of laughter and tearing of paper we looked up and there you were standing in the living room. We didn’t even hear you come down the stairs! We all stopped and said “Hi Addie!”
You promptly made your way over to daddy sitting on the floor. You looked around and visibly took a deep breath as if you were preparing yourself for whatever was next. Wasting no time in you being with us, daddy grabbed a gift from your pile and asked if you wanted to open it? He ripped a little piece and slid it over to you where you gave it a good once over before taking a rip at the paper all by yourself. This was a first Addie! Here you were sitting with us, our party of 5 opening presents and you were actually physically opening your presents (or just one, but you did it!). Not only did you open it, but you even stayed long enough to let daddy show you how to use your new gift. I could’ve cried Addie and my cheeks definitely hurt from smiling so much.
Addie we’ve waited a long time to have this moment, all 3 of our babies enjoying Christmas morning together, and this Christmas the day before your 9th birthday it happened. Truly a moment and a first we will never ever forget. While you sat viewing dinosaurs through a new viewfinder I was enjoying and savoring every moment of the view of our family together on Christmas morning.
Thank you for this memory Addie and Merry Christmas sweet girl.
We are so unbelievably proud of you!
Love,
Mom
Comments