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Spockles
member
ASD and birthday parties
Spockles
member
DS doesn't have an official ASD diagnosis yet, but he most likely will by the time we have slotted for his 2nd birthday party/celebration next month. Just wondering if other ASD families have birthday parties every year, even if their DC is anxious around a group of people.
We planned on just having immediate family, roughly 13 people. We were going to have it at a pizza place that has a party room. DS's favorite food is pizza. :-) DS is still shy around mine and DH's parents even though he sees them frequently. He often takes a while to warm up and clings on to me for dear life until he does warm up.
I've been thinking that maybe we should skip the family party until he's older and has more skills for coping with these types of situations and just celebrate me, DH and DS. What are your thoughts? We had a party for his first birthday and that was a mess. DS cried a lot. Covered his face. Didn't want to touch the cake, etc... Thinking back to that makes me question whether or not we should have a party or not, but I also don't want to treat him like he's different.
Thanks for your feedback!!
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Re: ASD and birthday parties
My philosophy on b-day parties is to do what makes the child happy, not what you think a b-day party should consist of and not what your family expects. Doing that is not "treating him like he's different" but rather making the day truly about him.
For my son's second birthday, we invited our two closest friend-families (couples with kids around his age) to his favorite water park. No presents, no singing and candles, just a day of fun at his favorite place, with cupcakes for a treat. Maybe for you, have a smaller celebration of the size your son would be comfortable with, and have the grandparents over another time?
We learned the hard way last year (we didn't have a dx nor did we suspect autism at the time) for DS1s 2nd birthday and we did a big party with lots of adult friends and a couple little kids.
It wasn't pretty.
Trust me, do what will make your child comfortable. We're going really low key for his third birthday in June and will only have a couple close friends over for a dinner and a few gifts. I definitely lived and learned on this one lol!
I take cues from his previous experiences at other bday parties - he has a lot of buddies so we are always going somewhere. As he gets used to certain experiences (and we learn how he reacts), we adjust. Thankfully our friends are understanding (maybe not so much other guests at the parties).
This year we did a big inflatable bouncy party indoors - which was great because he could do what he wanted. We could only do this by going to so many parties like this in the past - the first few times he definitely had sensory overload and was hyperfocused on the air compressors, lol.
Learning to judge his cues helps us out - we have left plenty of parties early because of some issue, believe me! For so long we stressed about his behavior and "what could happen" - and I really had to walk a line between letting him be a "kid" and knowing when it's too much. Like a PP wrote, do what you feel is best.