The silver lining

The silver lining : When it comes to #autism and the holidays, things can become even more challenging than usual. Of all the holidays each year, Christmas is by far the most overstimulating for my kids. It's for this reason that we can't always participate in the family festivities. For a long time I struggled with this. When I was growing up, Christmas was always a time when we visited tons of family and friends.  Our house was always decorated with bright lights and filled with the smell of fresh pine. Because our kids couldn't handle all the excitement, those days of big, bright and overdone holidays are long gone. While I felt a void, during the Christmas season, for a really long time, I'm actually thankful things worked out this way now.  I wish my kids had an easier time with things like this,  but I discovered a silver lining. In the absence of past traditions, we now have plenty of room to make new traditions. Since we are typically home bound during Christmas, we are able to focus on our kids and spend more one on one time with them. To me, the holidays are about family and while we may not be able to make the rounds to see family and friends, we definitely get to focus on our boys. Sometimes, you don't know what you really have until you lose something you thought you wanted.