Additional Needs
Age Appropriate
by Jodi Shenal
on 26th April, 2024
Special Needs: The Halloween Dread
You may knock on a house and it will be dark, the curtains will be drawn.
You will knock on the door and it will be opened up by a smiling mother who happily compliments the costumes and hands out packets of sweets.
While speaking in a quiet voice and making sure the door behind her doesn’t open. All this because her son is autistic.
You see this house is my home, where I have to care for my son who doesn’t cope with this sort of day at all.
This day comes with strangers knocking at his door, houses being decorated with spooky things; some that light up and some decorations that make noise.
There are shrieks of excitement from the street outside as children excitedly knock on people’s doors and share what they have been given with their friends and family as they walk back up the paths.
There is the general routine change as the school holds a disco, all the children at school are excited and the knocks disturb our quiet time.
After Halloween is done, and the decorations are taken down routine will only be in the house for so long before firework night and then Christmas.
Halloween to us, is the start of unease in our house, it is the start of routines slowly changing, it is the start of Christmas music blaring out of every shop and houses being lit up at night by fairy lights.
It is the start of when my son is so excited by firework night and Christmas that he isn’t too sure what to do and ends up either lashing out and hurting people or going into a ball and rocking.
I love seeing people have fun, and I hope that one day my son can be one of those people, however at the moment I can’t see this happening.
At this moment I am just willing my boy to not bounce off the walls when there’s the unexpected knock at the door, I am hoping not to be hit, when he is over excited by everything that is going on.
I am hoping that he can be comfortable in his surroundings as the events start to happen.
