BrainMoves and the Holidays
IThe Holidays are full of delights and dramas. Schedules are upended, family and friends visit and are welcomed. School days are filled with holiday events and over-stimulated, sugar-filled kids.
The holidays affect EVERYTHING: schedules, food, sleep, work, and playtime. You may also find yourselves visiting people more often, resulting in more waking and active hours. When you’re an adult, you can clearly communicate your schedules and anticipate upcoming events. However, when you’re a child, you are responsive to the decisions of adults. If your child also has hyperactivity, attention deficit, or sensory sensitivities, it can be an especially overstimulating time of year, no matter how much you love the candy, the lights, the presents, and all of that shiny stuff.
Here are a couple of tips to help everyone—neurodiverse people, young and old, children, mothers, fathers, and anyone who’s going to experience the holiday season.
Special Days Should Have as Normal a Schedule as Possible:
Do your best to keep to your regular schedule as much as possible. While the joy of having a couple of days off can include sleeping in, it is better to get up and eat breakfast every morning, as you do on a regular day. Picture this: It's 10 a.m., and your child is melting down because breakfast was an hour late: There was a party last night and everyone slept in. The dysregulation could last all day. For young children, particularly those with hyperactivity or who are easily overstimulated, their brains are going 100 miles a minute, and sleeping in may be challenging. Eating meals later can lead to low blood sugar, which can cause somatic discomfort, a fancy way of saying they don’t feel right physically, and make them feel uncomfortable and more likely to act out.
Mindfully manage your holiday Eating, do your best not to let the holiday meals manage you:
As an adult, if you find that you’re eating different foods or eating more lightly in anticipation of a big holiday meal later on, your body might not be thankful for the interruptions. Think about the holidays as a joyous marathon and plan accordingly. Even unintentional binging and fasting can lead to brain fog, anxiety or outbursts.
Think ahead how much sugar you and your children can easily handle and stick with it. Eating sugar can cause extreme hyperactivity and other behavioral issues in some children. If you do eat sugar, do your best to eat it after a meal with protein in it, to help your body process the sugar and keep balanced.
A healthy alternative is to bake with whole grains and use honey and/or fruit in place of sugar. Honey has vital trace minerals and nutrients and affects the pancreas differently than sugar. Combining whole grains helps slow down the absorption of the sweet ingredients and keep your blood sugar balance. You can usually find recipes using whole grains and sugar alternatives on the internet. Another alternative is If you are an experienced baker and feel confident about revising your current recipes, then go ahead and get creative!
Watch how such sleep you and your family is getting and how much “active time” you have each day:
It can be exciting to be at parties, holiday events, and celebrating traditions that are fantastic and create
memories that last a lifetime. You may also find that you have less formal holiday traditions like participating in school bake sales, Black Friday shopping or attending multiple mid day holiday events that lead to a lot of travel, scheduling, or tasks such as cleaning, cooking, or shopping. Bodies need time to rest and go-go-go can affect the healthiest person and the most energetic of children. Whether you or your child is feeling overwhelmed by all this activity, set good boundaries. First, take care of your needs to be your best self during the holiday season. If that means preparing a simple meal, that’s the boundary you set. If your child needs to eat a healthy meal and go to bed by 8 o'clock, that is the boundary you set.
Learn to measure the amount of effort an event requires and energy you have and learn to say “ no” when the supply of energy does not match the event need.
We spend a lot of time talking about boundaries on this Blog. It can be challenging to say no when faced with holiday activities, so here’s a gentle way to express limits: “We’d love to stay, but bedtime is 8:00, so let’s plan coffee tomorrow.” This way, you show respect for others while clearly communicating your needs and boundaries.
You might consider the 'spoon theory,' which is commonly used to describe energy levels for those with chronic illnesses, but can also be helpful for everyone during the busy holiday season. The theory says you only have so much energy each day, and everything you want to do takes effort, which can be measured in 'spoons.' If you imagine having two cups of energy on a given day, how many spoons can you give each task, knowing you only have so much to give? If you travel to Grandma’s the day before, your child—who’s normally patient about waiting for dessert after dinner—could find they don’t have enough spoons for patience, leading to a meltdown.
Maintain your wellness routines as much as possible.
This means continuing the exercises and movements that help you and your child stay regulated. For those who haven’t yet read our blog post from last week about emotional regulation, now is a great time to put some words to sensations you’re probably already feeling. By doing a couple of minutes of structured movement—yoga, BrainMoves, walking, or all of these—each day, you’re creating both consistency and stability for yourself and your child, as well as regulation through thoughtful movement to calm and balance your nervous system.
The holidays are one of my favorite times of the year. I love the intensity, the shining lights, and the pressure to travel and see people I wish I saw more often throughout the year. By following the tips listed above and doing some BrainMoves to keep me calm, organized and centered, I find it easy to understand what boundaries I need, set them for myself and follow them without stress. I’ve learned how to manage my schedule, eating, and commitments so I can see everyone and still feel like myself.
Hopefully, this year you can use some of these tips to have the best holiday. You deserve a joyous time and to be thankful for you and yours.
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