News from The RADish Ranch

Christmas is usually a dreaded time of year when you have children who have experienced trauma and who lack attachment. The pressure of happiness and family time, changed schedules, sensory overload, and a lack of felt safety and routine cause a lot of chaos, trauma drama, and meltdowns.

To help you through this season, we've put together a list of some less-stress, healing-friendly, trauma-responsive Christmas activities for you and your family.

All of these ideas will help your children to build positive relationship skills, think of others, and boost brain function, and spend time with their families doing something together is a great way to boost healing!

Happy Holidays and stay as sane as possible!

Karen Poitras

President & Founder of The RADish Ranch

Rather than rushing around to Christmas parties and gatherings with well-meaning family members, staying at home in a familiar environment with familiar parents and siblings around can greatly help to reduce trauma reactions and meltdowns for your child.

It also reduces parent stress - yay!

It can be helpful to send a letter out with your Christmas cards or an email letting family and friends know that you are spending Christmas as a family this year in order to have additional opportunities to help your child and family heal and feel safe.

Gather your family and a stack of Christmas cards and spend an afternoon or evening getting into the spirit of giving by writing cards out for others.

Send them to family and friends or drop a stack off at your local homeless shelter, hospital, food bank, or outreach program. (Added bonus - dropping them off locally saves a lot on postage!)

Toy Drive : Christmas lists of Giving.

Our children with RAD have a very hard time thinking of others and keeping their brains on positive thoughts. Having a Christmas tradition that focuses on giving and thinking of others can be a great boost to healing and family bonding.

Many fire stations will hold a toy drive before Christmas, and contacting your local fire house to see how your family can help can be a great way to get started. If there isn't a toy drive in your area, start one with family and friends and contact local shelters, children's hospitals, or Child and Family Services to find families in need.

Once you have something in place, sit together as a family and have each person create a Christmas Wish List - for others: what you wish another child (or adult) could have for Christmas. (It can be a bit easier sometimes if you give everyone a certain age range to work with.)

Once lists are made and shopping is done (yay for Amazon and Etsy!), spend an afternoon together wrapping the gifts and adding personalized tags to them.

Load them up and drop them of or arrange for the organization you're working with to pick up the gifts.

On Christmas Day look over the lists everyone made and the list of items that were purchased and who the gifts were given to in place of your usual family gift opening as a reminder of others and the giving of Christmas.

Going on a drive to see the Christmas lights together is a great way to spend some family time with children with RAD. They are in a safe environment without the stress and anxiety of strangers and sensory overload, and can feel the much needed sense of felt safety.

Put on cozy pjs, take along blankets, peppermint tea and snacks, and hit the road!

This can be a great time to have some family playtime by playing games like "I Spy". Parents start with "I Spy..." and everyone looks for the different Christmas decorations or colours.

P.S. don't forget to play or sing your favourite Christmas songs!

P.S.S. No cell phones or devices in the vehicle - focus on family time together (GPS allowed - don't get lost :D).

Build some of these cute not-full-of-sugar-and-dye "gingerbread" houses together as a family.

Full food lists and instructions are here: Christmas Time’s a Comin’

These are very fun to put together and they taste delicious!

They don't last as long as candy houses, so be sure to eat them right away or store them in the fridge for a day or two.

P.S. This list is to give you ideas and help make your Christmas season easier. Don't get stressed out over trying to make Christmas time as healing and therapeutic as you can. Take time to relax, enjoy family time, and do what is best for you, your family, and your child.

Questions about any of our content? Contact Karen at info@theradishranch.org

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“Behold, I will bring health and healing; I will heal them and reveal to them the abundance of peace and truth.”

The RADish Ranch | www.theradishranch.org | info@theradishranch.org

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