The hustle and bustle of the holidays brings both joy and stress for most of us. It’s a season for connection with family and others. This joy and stress can be even more heightened for neurodivergent individuals who may struggle with sensory, communication, and behavioral challenges. These challenges can bring about extra stress when navigating the holidays for the neurodivergent person and their family. However, by holding onto your values, setting healthy boundaries, and focusing on your family’s joy, these challenges can feel more manageable.
These challenges are incredibly unique to each individual and each family, these are just some of the stressors families and individuals face around the holidays.
Unique Challenges for Neurodivergent Individuals Around the Holidays:
- Drastic schedule changes due to school closures and business closures (e.g., a child’s favorite store closes earlier than usual due to holidays).
- Expectations to stray from comfort foods to engage with traditional meal expectations (e.g., family members cook thanksgiving dinner and want a child to eat Turkey with the family. However, they typically eat chicken nuggets and mac and cheese).
- Increase in social settings and social demands when visiting family gatherings and engaging in holiday events (e.g., more family present within their home for gatherings, an increase in visits to other family members home).
- Being around adults who are less familiar to the child (e.g., the child’s uncle from further away only visits once a year during holidays and has not had time to develop a relationship with the child).
- Differences in clothing as the weather shifts to cold and families look towards themed clothing for the holidays (e.g., the introduction of sweaters, jackets, gloves, etc. may present sensory challenges; the family wants to start a tradition of matching pajamas but the child has preferred outfit choices outside of that).
- Parents’ attention may shift to focus on holiday preparations, decorations, and gift buying (e.g., in the evening child had more time with caregivers, however now they are out buying gifts, or shifting their attention to preparing for the holidays within the home).
- Increase in sensory stimulation as there may be more people around, decoration changes within and outside of the home, and loud noises that aren’t typical on a day-to-day basis (e.g., when at a family member’s house for a gathering, loud conversation and holiday themed music fills the room).
- An increased pressure to engage in “masking”, which refers to when a person hides, suppresses, or changes their natural behaviors, emotions, or traits to appear more socially typical or to avoid negative reactions from others.
With these challenges in mind, it’s important to remember that neurodivergent individuals may be expending extra energy to maintain self-regulation during holiday traditions and activities. This leaves them highly susceptible to burn-out, sensory overwhelm, and emotional dysregulation.
One way to support our neurodivergent individuals in our family is to set healthy boundaries around the holidays with them and with those who they spend the holidays with. Every person and every family, deserves to enjoy the holidays in the way that best suits them.
In the next section, we’ll use a practical framework to help you figure out what matters most to you and use those values to set healthy boundaries. This approach is called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT.
Boundary Setting while using ACT
Boundary setting for yourself and for your child can be scary, as it leaves us susceptible to fear of rejection, guilt, and shame around needing different boundaries to support your neurodivergent child. There is also uncertainty about how your family would react to these boundaries as it may threaten long time traditions surrounding holidays.
Through this fear, we can use ACT, to recenter ourselves. ACT is designed to increase psychological flexibility to better prepare individuals to be present in the moment, persistent in challenges or change their behavior to align with their core values. ACT includes the following steps which can be used to strengthen our confidence in setting boundaries:
- Acknowledge the feeling
- Communicate the limit
- Teach an alternative
How to Practice
Practice makes progress. The more we practice using our values to set boundaries, the less scary they can become. Here are some examples of holiday situations that might disrupt your holiday joy and boundaries that might help restore it.
Scenario #1: When you arrive to Christmas dinner, your mother-in-law has crafted a perfect feast. However, you know your child well enough to know they will find more joy in having a hotdog and chips at the dinner table.
- Acknowledge the feeling: “I really appreciate that you cooked for us. I know how much work you put into Christmas”.
- Communicate the limit: “We can ask him to try the meal and even make him a plate, but we will allow him to choose what he eats for his holiday meal”.
- Teach an alternate: Help support your child in setting their own boundaries by teaching them to say, “I’d like some of this, but not that” or “no thank you I will eat this instead” or providing a thanksgiving meal choice menu that has pictures of what was cooked as well as preferred foods.
Scenario #2: In the weeks leading up to the holidays, your child expresses that they will not be going to their uncle’s house for Christmas. This is a tradition that your family values and you want to set boundaries with your child.
- Acknowledge the feeling: “I understand that you do not want to go your uncle’s house for Christmas”
- Communicate the limit: “We will not be staying home on Christmas and we will be going to his house for 3 hours on Christmas and will leave by 6PM, but we will help support you during this time.
- Teach an alternative: If you feel overwhelmed at Christmas you can take a break in the guest room”.
Tips and Tricks
- Use group messages to alert all family members and other guests of your child’s boundaries beforehand so everyone is aware (e.g., “Hi everyone, just so you know my child may need to take breaks during the party. I would appreciate if we just give him space when he does”).
- Practice boundary setting with consistent times and expectations (e.g., “We are only going to stay here until 5 then we will have to go home”).
- Model boundary setting for your child and others around you by consistently setting boundaries within your life.
- Consult your values when boundary setting gets tough by asking yourself what really matters: following holiday traditions to perfection or allowing your child and your family to feel and express joy during a period of high stress
With preparation, respect for individual needs, and strong boundaries, the holidays can shift from stressful to joyful, creating more opportunities for connection and belonging.
Let us help you be the best advocate for your child. Reach out at acclaimautism.com
For more reading on this topic, please check out the following resources:
Guo, Y., He, H., & Lan, J. (2025). The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on parental stress in parents of special children: A meta-analysis. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 19, 1-13. doi:https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-025-00944-y
Walker-Pethick, A. (2023). A phenomenological study on the lived experiences of family members raising a child with severe autism: Informing educators, medical providers, and first responders (Order No. 30246315). Available from Education Collection; Publicly Available Content Database. (2808849228). Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/phenomenological-study-on-lived-experiences/docview/2808849228/se-2
(This article offers general educational information and is not medical advice. Always consult your child’s clinicians for individualized recommendations.)
