Tis the season

10 ways to keep the holidays from steering you off course

It’s almost holiday time. Are you ready? Or do you dread this time of year? Will you enjoy specially prepared meals with family? Or will it be regular trips to fast food joints for chicken nuggets and fries? One look at me, and you can see that holiday time agrees with me quite well.

I have been doing this kind of work for ages, and it never fails that I get phone calls during the holidays because of severe meltdowns, or major tantrum episodes. It is precisely these kinds of events that discourage families from either inviting others over to celebrate, or accepting an invitation to join another family to celebrate. The constant fear of a meltdown frequently causes some to simply stay home. This is one of the most frustrating scenarios for me, as a therapist. I take my role very seriously with respect to changing behavior, and subsequently changing the overall quality of life for everyone in the family. Being able to have your family engage with others on special occasions is a major benchmark of making progress with the family.

Let me share some of the things that I have families do in preparation for a holiday event. They might help make a better time for everyone. Here are some major assumptions:

1. Each child actually does want to participate, take charge, and have something to do with regard to the special event. Not understanding the situation, not knowing the meaning of the event, not knowing the schedule, and what to expect is the usual culprit of the meltdown.

2. Each child’s desire to participate, makes them want to take charge, to take control, and they do not know what is going on so, they soon realize that they can not take charge. This is part of the underlying trigger for a meltdown.

3. Begin a scrap book of the impending event. Take some quality time with magazines, newspapers, and the internet, and the local library. Focus on the nature of the holiday; it’s meaning, and the rituals, routines, and the different types of foods and preparations. Begin to assemble a picture book of the many different aspects of the event. If possible, do so in some sort of order of the events.

4. Expect the child to participate in some form. This sounds way too easy, but it is quite doable. Begin to practice, practice, and practice. From what you have assembled in terms of the nature of the holiday, make a list of the possible things the child can help with. Remember, the term here is ‘help,’ not ‘do totally independently.’ From the item(s) selected, begin to associate some form of participation with the awarding of points, or pennies, or stickers, or plusses, or something that means the eventual cashing in of these earned items for something that is highly desired (e.g., a trip to the favorite fast food place, computer time, etc.). Keep this list in the book that you are making, and, after simple little, short duration experiences, place the points, etc., onto the checklist to show that this new type of activity can really pay off.

5. This process is very much like a task analysis combined with a token economy, response gain process (go look that up). Please remember, the ultimate goal is always that of having the family participate in a process together. This process, in turn, helps to desensitize the child to the holiday routine, gives the necessary insight and understanding, and enables the child to partake in some of that process. All of this is scored, and that scoring shows the child the ultimate importance of said participation.

6. Remember that the child’s process is not one of total leadership. What I mean here, is that the child takes on some role, in preparation, and contribution to the holiday event. The child acquires an understanding of the ritual and process. This empowers the child, and reduces the likelihood of meltdowns.

7. More often than not, the children we work with have little to no understanding of cleanliness, or sanitary conditions. If the areas you are practicing on consist of food preparation, there has to be some attention given to clean hands, not wiping one’s nose, not drooling, coughing, or sneezing during the process. This means the need to redirect the child to clean their hands/face every once in a while. You simply stop the process, and direct the child. This could be a trigger that gets the child upset. If there is an awarding of the token for the cooperation, a new receptivity will begin to appear — plus the child has learned to cover his/her mouth, and do a better job of washing themselves.

8. Timing is very critical. When you think in terms of holiday, you think about all of the aspects associated with the event: travel and traffic, preparation, set up, guests, seating, food preparation, serving, who has to sit next to Uncle Joe (a term I frequently use for the one person that has to be invited, but no one really likes). From your perspective, this is a very labor intensive process—this could be the real reason that you think about blowing the entire event off, and blame it on the child. The reason I bring it up, is that you should not expect the child to be able to participate the entire time from beginning to end without some tension. Be prepared. Bring your data sheet with the scores, have the child earn some time off task, time alone, time with his little Game Boy or DVD. In your book, you will have a semblance of a schedule of the event in terms of when things follow each other. For example, set up comes way before dessert, and there are all kinds of parts of the process that take place in between set up and dessert. As many of these different parts of the process can be written down in schedule form. Do not include the times! Just the different steps in the process.

9. Since you have this entire event in your head, and you can plan on the process, and practice, you will start to see all kinds of changes in the child’s behavior. He/she will actually begin to look forward to the process—especially when the points/tokens are built into participation. Years back, one family I worked with saw such a dramatic change in the child’s behavior - for the good—that the child became a major part of the process. One thing they did not expect was when the child was given the responsibility to carry in the turkey to the dining room, everyone began to applaud and shout, and down went the turkey onto the floor. A major meltdown followed and I got a phone call shortly afterwards. So, try to cover as many bases as possible.

10. This process is not only effective for holiday events. The same can be done for social skills training, for other children’s birthday parties, for your own child’s birthday party, for trips, for going away to camp, and for things like Bar Mitzvah training and celebrations.

Please try to keep in mind that you cannot stop any part of the process because of a fight/problem with the child. The child will know that he/she just failed, and this will not only be a trigger for a meltdown, but it will also serve as a type of deprivation to the child. This state of deprivation will cause the child to want to come back to the process. Frequently, he/she will want to do it again, alone, at a time of day when no one is aware—you may have seen this type of thing happen before—like in the middle of the night. Remember to avoid using the word ‘no.’ Use terms like ‘great try,’ or ‘almost,’ or ‘we can do that later.’ Also, keep in mind that your child can sense when you are not being genuine, or having a good time. So, really try to have some fun with the process.