MENG MCLENDON: Hi, everyone. My name is Meng McClendon. Welcome to our Families First presentation on Communication Tips for the Holidays. As a quick access check before we get started, we are enabling captions during this presentation so you can see captions of what's being spoken on the screen. You may have to update your Zoom account to access these captions, but they are available.

As we go through the presentation, I will provide image descriptions of anything that's on the screen, any images that are on the screen. And then if there are any other reasonable accommodations that we can make during this presentation, please let me know.

Again, my name is Meng McClendon. I am a Speech Language Pathologist at the Institute on Disabilities. In my role here, I serve as one of four augmentative and alternative communication services coordinators. If you have any questions about this presentation, please feel free to email me at meng.mclendon@temple.edu, or give me a call at the phone number listed on the screen.

Our objectives today are to identify at least three strategies to increase communication opportunities as children navigate the holidays, which can be a little bit challenging for some kids, and also to identify at least three community resources that may help facilitate communication development during the holidays. This presentation is courtesy of Temple University's Institute on Disabilities. The Institute on disabilities works with and learns from people who have disabilities and their families to promote self-determination and make disability part of the natural lived experience of human life.

This presentation is also brought to you by our Families First program, which is a free training program for families receiving early intervention services in the city of Philadelphia. These training's are typically provided by other families receiving or navigating the early intervention system in Philadelphia, as well as nationally recognized professionals.

And then TechOWL is also supporting this effort. As a speech language pathologist, I do work on the TechOWL team. TechOWL is the state of Pennsylvania's assistive Technology Act program. We provide information and dissemination of education on assistive technology to Pennsylvanians.

First up on our agenda today is to identify communication challenges. So some of the challenges that we may face-- just to get us started, get right in there-- some of the challenges that we may face as we navigate the holidays with young children are increased sensory input first. There's often a change in environment and in our settings during the holiday season. We see a lot of lights. There's more noise. There's a lot of people talking all at once during holiday gatherings, a lot of festivities, larger gatherings in general, especially during like New Year's Eve.

And so all of these things can contribute to increased sensory input for our children. Another thing is changes to routines. A lot of times with young children, as parents, we get ourselves into routines with our kids. And when the holidays come, our routines shift.

So sometimes maybe parents have a routine of picking their kids up from preschool and then taking them straight home to get a snack, and then maybe having a nap and some playtime and then having dinner. But during the holiday season, maybe parents have to pick the kid up from preschool and then go to the store instead of going straight home for a snack. So there's a change in the routine, which can be difficult for some kids to navigate. Change is hard. I don't like change myself. And so it can be difficult for some kids to navigate especially when they're not anticipating a change in their routine.

Another challenge that we have during the holiday season is just navigating unfamiliar environments. The holiday season brings about a lot of camaraderie for people to gather with their friends and their families. And with this, sometimes we're asking our children to go to unfamiliar environments and navigate that setting. That's the setting that's completely new to them, and that can be challenging.

Another challenge is that attention piece. So for parents, often the holidays bring about a time when there are increased demands on their attention as far as maybe planning a holiday gathering, for example. Maybe you're planning a dinner party at your home for New Year's Eve, and so you have to put your attention on to that task. But that takes some attention away from our children, and that can also be difficult for kids to navigate.

When we're thinking about restriction, we're thinking about the season itself. So a lot of times during the holiday season, the sun is setting really early. Here in Philly, it's dark before 5:00 PM. It's dark around like 4:45. And so that's hard, right?

Children are not getting a lot of time after leaving preschool to go outside and enjoy the fresh air. It's also really, really cold. And that's another difficulty or another limitation of being able to go outside. Because it's so cold, it's not as much fun to be outside. It requires more layers. It requires a lot more creativity.

And when we're not planning ahead, it can be hard, and so kids start to feel restricted and feel like they're not able to go outside as much, which can be challenging for some kids. And then there's also the boredom and frustration just because our activities are limited during the holiday season to indoors for the most part. And a lot of indoor spaces are not welcoming to children in general, but when we're thinking about children with disabilities, indoor spaces are often not adapted enough for them to feel free enough to roam and to explore and just be a space for children to have more fun. So these are the challenges that we're facing during the holiday season.

But how are these challenges presented? Well, primarily they're presented in our children's behaviors. A lot of times we see these challenges come up as tantrums. There's irritability. There's refusal to participate. Some kids will straight up hide. They will go into a room and they will decide that they're not coming out because they don't want to engage with the sensory overload that comes with the holiday season.

Like I said earlier, the holidays do bring about a sudden change. And some of us are not good with change. There's a lot of increased demands and expectations placed on us, and this can be overwhelming for anyone, but especially for little children who are not as familiar with the holidays, the holiday season in general.

Now, we're going to discuss some strategies to mitigate some of these challenges. The first thing that's really important is making the holidays child-friendly. On the screen in front of you, there are two young African-American boys, probably 7-years-old or younger, wearing capes around their necks, and they are running in the foreground of the image. In the background of the image, there is a house that has holiday lights strewn across the tops of the windows.

All right, so the first challenge that we have to navigate, it is dealing with increased sensory input. Color scheme. We want to choose a color scheme and stick to it when we're decorating for the holidays. Again, the holiday season brings about a lot of environmental changes in decorations to the home, to the city at large, the neighborhood.

There's just a lot of change and we can't control all of the decorations nationwide. We can't even control the decorations that are in our neighborhoods. But we can control the decorations in our homes. And so if we're dealing with children who are likely to experience increased sensory input challenges, it can be helpful to choose a color scheme and stick with it.

So as far as color schemes go, maybe we're doing a red and green color scheme for our holiday season, or we're doing a blue and white color scheme, or maybe it's black and gold. Whatever color scheme we choose-- it could even be green and blue, I don't know. But whatever color scheme we choose for the holiday season, we want to make sure that that color scheme is consistent across the board.

So it's the color scheme for all of our decorations. It's the color scheme for the pajamas that we're wearing over the holiday season. It's the color scheme for the wrapping paper for gifts and things like that. Regardless, we need these things to be consistent and we need the color scheme to be consistent.

Another thing that beyond just the color scheme itself, it's really important to take into consideration the texture of the colors or the texture of the things you're displaying in general. So for some children, it may be OK to have red and green glittery wrapping paper because it still falls within that color scheme that's chosen for the season for that family. However, for other children, that glittery tent or that glittery coloring over the red and green can be too much.

And so maybe it just needs to be a flat red and green color scheme. So taking those things into consideration is really important. That texturization of different items is also really important to consider when we're thinking about our color schemes and our children. It can also be helpful to just talk about the things that we're displaying, talk about the Christmas tree, talk about the Menorah, talk about the wreaths that you see outside on the street lights, talk about the lights that are outside on the neighbor's windows or whatever holiday displays that are outside on the neighbor's lawn. It can be helpful to talk about those things so that children understand why they're starting to see these things that they have not seen all year long.

Another way that we can navigate the challenge of increased sensory input is by minimizing lighting. If the lighting is absolutely necessary, if it's absolutely necessary to put up holiday lights in the house, we can choose to minimize the lighting. We can choose to maybe do soft lighting instead of really bright, vibrant lighting. We can also choose lights that are on and only on instead of doing lights that are flashing and blinking.

We can also decide to confine the extra lighting to one room. Maybe the lighting is only in the living room. Those holiday lights are only in the living room. Or maybe the holiday lights are only outside on the porch or on the stoop, right? That's one way we can navigate that increased sensory input for our kids just to keep the lighting to a minimum and make sure that lighting matches the color scheme that your family has chosen for the holiday season.

Again, we can't control our neighbors. We can't control the city and what the city puts up, but we can control the things that are in our homes for our children to feel safe and comfortable as they also navigate the holiday season. And then we also want to think about music. So the holiday season does come with a lot of music. And for some kids, that can be a little bit difficult as well to navigate or challenging to hear it all the time.

For me personally, sometimes I feel that holiday music comes with a sort of like brassy, tinny tone to it. And for some kids, that can be a bit off putting. And so when we're thinking about holiday music, we can keep the music volume to very low so that it's not disturbing our children. We can also restrict the music to one space. Again, maybe the music is only in the living room or it's only in the kitchen, in spaces that the child does not necessarily go into very much.

And then we can set timers. Maybe if we play music for 30 minutes at night, right after dinner and before bath time, right? Or maybe we play the music midday when the child is still at school, still in preschool, things like that. Additionally, I think it's really important because not every child celebrates the winter holidays, and for those kids who don't celebrate the winter holidays, I still think it's really important to go back to this earlier point about talking about the things that are displayed.

If your family does not celebrate the holiday, it's really important to still talk about those things because those children will still see these decorations outside. And so it's important to say to them oh, you see these wreaths outside because these people celebrate this holiday. Or maybe you see these holiday lights or these holiday figures on people's lawns, because people celebrate this holiday. And explain to them we don't celebrate it, but this is what other people are doing, and that's why you're seeing this.

Just so that when children are running into these increased sensory input demands, it comes to them with a reason. It's not just there. It's not just something that they have to navigate without explanation from the adults around them.

Changes to routine. So on the screen there are four arrows. Three of the arrows are going straight up to each other, sort of in the shape of a box. But the fourth arrow is veering off outside of the box to demonstrate changes to the routine. When we're thinking about mitigating challenges that come as a result of changes to our kids routines, we want to try to minimize these changes as much as we can.

So if we can, we need to try to keep the kids morning routine consistent. If your morning routine is we wake up, we wash our faces and brush our teeth, we get dressed, and then we go downstairs and sit at the table for breakfast, then we keep that consistent as much as possible. We want to get up at the same time. We want to eat breakfast at the same time.

Just keeping that routine as consistent as possible can make it a little bit easier for children to navigate any other routine changes during the holiday. Another thing that's really important for this particular challenge is to plan things in advance. The earlier you plan as the parent, the earlier you can introduce this event or this concept to your child so that they can start mentally preparing themselves for this event as well.

Talk about what the child should expect throughout the day. So if you're at breakfast or you're in the car on your way to drop your child off for preschool, prepare them again by talking about what they should expect-- OK, we're going to drop you off at school. But when mommy comes back to pick you up, we have to go to the store. We're not going to go straight home for our snack, but I'll make sure I have a snack in the car for you-- so that the child can acclimate themselves to this idea, OK, there's a change coming after preschool today. Mommy did mention this earlier today. It makes it a little bit easier to navigate, to just feel comfortable with it all.

Yeah, planning and talking about these things really does help our children prepare themselves for what's coming throughout the holiday or throughout that day during the holiday season, because it is a change to their routine. If you can, it is also really helpful to create visual schedules for each day. We know that in general, visual schedules are really, really good for children who have neurodivergent abilities, and by having a visual schedule set up for them during the regular day, it helps them anticipate what they need to do, what's already been done, anticipating what's coming up.

And then we use the same research to help children navigate the holiday season. So creating a visual schedule for each day, OK, today we're going to go get the Christmas tree, I don't know, something like that. Oh, but that's on my schedule, as a child. I see that that's what's next on my schedule after getting my little brother from preschool. The next thing is to go get the Christmas tree and take that home.

So children have that ability and that time to just prepare themselves for what is expected of them. I think as a caveat, it's really important for us as adults to recognize that although these holiday routines are traditional for us. As adults, when we're thinking about children, we have to think about the fact that for a lot of kids, these things are still very, very new to them.

So we've been doing these routines for 20-plus years. But for our five-year-old child, they might not remember the first two or three years that they've done this. And so for them, this is still a very new tradition. And so we really need to take those types of things into consideration.

And then finally, when we're thinking about changes to the routine as a challenge, during the holiday season, we really do need to think about timing. Think about the time that you're doing things, right? There's already a change in your child's routine by picking them up from school and not going straight home. Well, if you know that normally I pick my kids up from school and we go straight home and my child takes a nap for 40 minutes, it's probably not a good idea to plan to pick your child up from school and take them to Aunt Lucy's house immediately after school, because they're already not going home, you're breaking their routine. And this meeting with Aunt Lucy is during their nap time, so maybe there's more irritability there, right?

And so we really do need to think about timing as we're changing our kids routines so that maybe we don't go straight to Aunt Lucy's house after preschool. Maybe we stop at the store for a little bit, or maybe stop at a park and let my child run around and just get the jitters of school, preschool off of them. And then we go to Aunt Lucy's. Or maybe I drive long enough, take the long route to Aunt Lucy so that they can have a little bit of a nap in the car while we're on the way to Aunt Lucy's. Things like that, just to make that change to their routine a little bit easier to manage for them.

So again, another challenge that comes with the holiday season is just unfamiliar environments. The holiday seasons bring a time for us to gather with our family and friends and often distant relatives that we don't see very often. So that means that for a lot of us, that means we're navigating unfamiliar environments. Like, for example, maybe grandma and grandpa live in Connecticut and not in Philly, and they're about, I don't know, a 3-hour drive away. So maybe we don't often go to grandma and grandpa's house.

So we're going to a new environment that's new for the child. Or at least if it's not new, it's definitely unfamiliar to the child. And so when we're thinking about this, we want to keep surprises at bay. We don't want to have any surprises for our kids. So maybe we talk about oh, we're going to grandma and grandpa's in Connecticut. And maybe grandma and grandpa in Connecticut send us pictures of their living room so that the child can see their living room on the phone before they actually go to the house.

Maybe they send us pictures of the kitchen-- oh, this is where we're going to eat dinner at grandma and grandpa's next weekend-- so that the child is not totally surprised by this new environment. They've at least acclimated to the environment by seeing it in pictures a little bit. If it's possible, keep the unfamiliar environments. Keep the child's exposure to those unfamiliar environments as short as possible.

So if there's a large family gathering coming up in two weeks, maybe the weekend before my child and I go to grandma and grandpa's for about an hour just so that my child has time to explore the environment a little bit before the large gathering of 20-plus cousins next week. And those types of visitations, we want to keep those short. The initial visits to unfamiliar environments, we want to keep them short, and we want to plan our kids escape.

So as parents, it's really important for us to be aware of and familiar with our child's non-verbal communication and what certain challenges look like for them. So when you see that your child is becoming overwhelmed, have a plan in place ahead of time. Maybe you tell Aunt Lucy or grandma and grandpa my child has a hard time with unfamiliar environments. We'll say as long as we can, but when the time comes, if they start to become overwhelmed, we're going to head out and we might not say goodbye to everyone. But just so you know, that's what's going on.

Having that type of communication with other hosts during the holidays is helpful for the host to understand that you're not just leaving their event because you don't like them, or you're not enjoying yourself, or you're not enjoying the company that is in attendance at the event. They understand that, OK, your child is feeling overwhelmed and you just had to leave. And they can later communicate that to other event attendees if it's asked.

But also having that communication helps you, as a parent, because you don't have to feel bad or feel guilty for leaving events early. You can just say to yourself, I've already communicated this with this group of people. This is the situation that we have and we just have to go.

I've already communicated it. I don't have to feel bad and I can keep my child safe. Again, for a lot of our younger children, the holiday season is not quite a tradition for them yet. For a lot of them, it's still really, really new and we want the holidays to be associated with positivity.

And so by acknowledging their discomfort in certain settings and making it so that we have an escape plan not only for them but with them, makes it so that the holiday is safe. They feel safe with the holidays. It's a positive experience. It doesn't become a negative experience. And then the next year, it's a little bit easier for them to navigate and to just be a part of, participate in.

Attention, again. So during the holiday season, as adults, we find that there are increased demands on our attention. But that also means that we're taking attention away from our kids. And so an easy way for us to navigate this specific challenge is just by setting aside time to focus on our child and what they are doing, or to set aside time to do something that they specifically want to do.

So on the screen, there is a picture of an older man with one child sitting on his lap and another child sitting at the table next to him. The man is making a funny face with hand gestures, and the child sitting next to him is smiling. So this picture shows us that this man is setting aside time to play with his kids during a meal. And that's nice for that family, but that's something that we can also do.

We can set aside that time not just during meal time, but maybe right after meal time to focus on our kid and focus on something that they want to do so that they don't feel neglected or abandoned or even isolated during the holiday seasons, which place increased demands on adult's attention. It's also really important to involve children in as many holiday traditions as you possibly can. So if lighting the Menorah is something that your family does, involve your child in that process.

Maybe you light the Menorah together hand-in-hand. Maybe you allow your child to decide what their favorite holiday music is, and even if it's not holiday related, their favorite song also goes into the holiday playlist. Involving children in as many holiday traditions as possible is really important to help them feel like, although your attention on them has decreased a bit, they are still part of this entire experience with you, their parents.

And then one of the easiest times of the day, I kind of already talked about this, but one of the easiest times of the day to share your attention with your child is when everyone's eating. We're all eating together. OK, let's talk about Bluey. I don't know, what did we see on Bluey? Does Bluey have a holiday episode that your child watched recently?

And if not Bluey, let's talk about your LEGOs. Oh, that was really cool what you built this morning. I really love that. How did you build that? Can you tell me more about it? Using that meal time to check in with your child as well is a really good strategy for navigating the challenge that comes with attention.

So as part of the holiday season, it's just very restricted. It's cold outside. It gets dark really early. Again, like I said, in Philly, it's dark before 5:00 PM in December. It's awful. It's hard.

So we often feel really restricted. We feel really confined and really cooped up. We're in the house the majority of the day. We don't get a lot of fresh air. And if anyone knows the phrase "touch grass," it's really important for grounding us, right?

But that's still true in the winter. And although there's not much grass outside, we have to get outside. We have to go outside and just get that fresh air. But in the winter or during the winter holiday season, we have to be creative to do this. So sometimes, we just have to bundle up as adults, just bundle up and go outside. Even if we're outside for 15 minutes running around, we have to do this.

The picture on the screen is actually a picture of Franklin Square here in Philadelphia. Franklin Square, decorated with a bunch of holiday lights and snowmen with hats and a couple of people wearing coats in the background. Coats and hats and hoods in the background. But yeah, we got to bundle up and go outside.

We don't want to go outside as adults, but we have to bundle up. We have to go outside just to get our kids outside and get them out of the house to navigate that feeling of like angst from being in the house for too long. If it is really, really cold outside and we can't go and be outside at all. A couple of weeks ago, we had a day here in Philly where it was, I think, 14 degrees outside, which is really, really cold.

Like, nobody wants to be outside for any amount of time in that temperature. And so maybe we don't go outside, but maybe we bundle up and we get in the car and we take a ride, and we just look at the holiday lights throughout the neighborhood or other neighborhoods. Maybe we just take a drive in general on 76 and just look at the Schuylkill River, right?

Those are ways that we can be creative to just get outside. And then when we really can't get outside, we can be creative in other ways. Parades. Parades are a big thing during the holiday season. However, parades come with a lot of increased sensory demands.

Even for adults, it's a lot. There's large crowds. There's a lot of loud sounds. There's a lot of bright lights. Just noise in general. So we can get creative.

Maybe for the holiday parade, we don't go outside to the parade, but maybe we watch the parade on our TV and maybe we march with the parade or we pretend to announce the parade, and we describe what we see on the parade on the TV. These are things that we can do to be creative. We can go to the stores and look at the holiday displays that we see inside of stores.

Just different things. Or I guess just as adults, it's really important for us to think of different things so that we can be creative to navigate the restriction that does come with the season. Because again, it's cold and it's dark, but that doesn't mean that we can keep our kids in the houses because of that. We have to get them outside and we just have to be creative to do that, or creative about doing that.

Boredom and frustration. So again, as adults, we think we're interesting. We're not nearly as interesting as we think we are. And when you're coupling that with just being inside all day, every day because it's so cold outside or because it's so dark outside, yeah, kids are going to get bored and they might get frustrated. They might become frustrated because of their boredom and they're not expressing that they're frustrated.

But you might see frustration as a result of their boredom. It's on us to make that discernment. But also, we have to be interesting to help navigate that boredom, to circumvent that boredom. Be interesting as adults. Don't just choose interesting activities. Make sure that you are interesting as you engage in the activity or present the activity.

I know it's easier said than done when you're tired, but it's really, really important and necessary that we do this. So when we're reading a book, one thing that I really like to do with a lot of the kids that I worked with in early intervention was I would change the main character's name in the book, and I would use all kinds of crazy voices and gestures and faces to make the book more interesting. Some kids naturally love to read, and that's great. That's an interesting activity for them.

But as the adult who's reading with them, I still have to be interesting in that activity. It's really important to exaggerate all of your movements, everything you do. Exaggerate it. And then feel like it's OK to break away from a tradition.

For example, people love to eat or consume eggnog during the holidays. I don't know about many people, but for me, I hated eggnog as a child. It was disgusting. I don't like the texture. It's too thick.

It's a lot of things with me and eggnog. But it's OK for us to break away from that tradition. Maybe you have a kid who's kind of like me, and they're like, I don't really like eggnog like that. Well, OK, instead of drinking the eggnog, maybe we make eggnog French toast.

And so we use the eggnog instead of milk so that the child can still taste the eggnog and participate in some aspect of that holiday tradition of consuming eggnog during the winter holiday season. But they don't actually have to drink the eggnog. Things like that.

And then frustration. Again, frustration comes because kids will get bored. And it might even come because even though we're trying to do all these things to circumvent these challenges, these communication challenges during the holidays, we might not be doing the best job of it, or we still might run into some difficulties there. And so when we're thinking about frustration and our kids are becoming frustrated with us during the holiday season, just embrace the break.

Woo. It's OK to just take a breath, take a break, and just decide, OK, you know? We had all these things on our to do list this Sunday, but my child is having a really hard time with it. Do we have to get the Christmas tree? Probably not. Again, break away from the tradition.

We don't have to get the Christmas tree. We don't have to do any of these things. We can just take a break from the whole holiday season. Or maybe we just take a break from that activity. But just taking a break can really help our children during the holiday season.

And then as some just additional suggestions that didn't really-- or some of them fell into other topics that we just discussed, but create a place of refuge for your child and tell them where it is and its function. With all of the visual and auditory and tactile and just environmental changes that come with the holiday season, it can be really, really overwhelming. And so we want to make sure that there's a place that our child can go to for refuge or just respite, just take a break away from all of that that they find overwhelming.

And when we do that, we want to make sure that our kids know where that space is and they know what its function is. And so maybe for your child, it's their bedroom. The holiday decor never touches your child's bedroom. It doesn't even come close, not even within five feet of your child's bedroom. The music, the lights, none of it. The decorations in general, none of it comes close to your child's bedroom so that that can be their safe space.

Now, when we're thinking about that, though, we don't want to just be like, OK, you're overwhelmed with all of these lights and music. Go to your room and take a break, because then it becomes a punishment, right? Maybe we take that time when they become frustrated, we set aside time as well, and we go into that space of refuge with our child, and we sit there with them for a little while.

And that would be a great time to explain, OK, this is where you come when you're frustrated or you're tired of dealing with the holiday festivities. We can just hang out right here and this is fine. And we can just play and everything can be normal. Nothing in here has changed. That's a great time to do that with your child. And also, that's also a really good time to redirect your attention away from the increased holiday demands and put it back onto your child to help them get through whatever difficult time that they're facing in that moment.

Another thing is introducing holiday foods slowly. A lot of the foods that we eat during the holidays tend to be things that we only eat during the holidays. So I can only think of the beverages. So I can think of apple cider and eggnog, maybe a ham. But these are not things that we eat daily.

And so again, for our kids, the holiday season is brand new to them. I guess it's just not familiar to them. And so the holiday foods also are not very familiar with them. And so we're already changing their routines during the holiday season and we're changing the foods that they eat somewhat. So maybe we just introduce holiday foods slowly one by one. And we can think of including sensory sensitive foods.

Again, eggnog to me is really thick and gross. But trying that eggnog French toast or things that we eat often are sometimes reimagined during the holidays. So we eat green beans in June, but we don't often eat a green bean casserole in June. Usually, that's something that we eat during the holiday season. So again, introducing these foods slowly so that we can help our kids acclimate to the changes in the diet during the holiday season. And just keeping our kids with eating sensitivities and food apprehension in our forethought when we're planning holiday meals is really important in general.

As a side note, to describe the image on the screen, I talked so much about eggnog, but the image on the screen is actually an eggnog milkshake that has red and green sprinkles around the rim. It looks like it has whipped cream topping and some kind of gingerbread cookie sprinkled on top. Back to the additional suggestions.

We want to embrace familiarity. Again, the holiday season is very traditional to us, but not necessarily traditional to our young children yet who are still learning the holidays. And so we need to think about how important it is to embrace that familiarity with their toys. Maybe there's music that they like. And again, instead of just playing holiday music-only, we incorporate the music that our kids like into the holiday music playlist so that they have some sort of familiarity in that music that they're listening to.

Sensory items, maybe we get weighted blankets that are holiday-themed and within our color scheme for the season. What else could we do? We could get holiday-themed noise-canceling headphones or get stickers that are holiday-themed and put them on our kids noise-canceling headphones so that the child has access to things that are familiar to them, but still embracing the holiday season in general.

And then finally just practice. All of this comes down to practice, practice, practice. It takes a lot for us as adults to practice, again, practicing that awareness of our child's nonverbal cues, practicing opening gifts, for example. Maybe we need to open a gift for our kid or practice opening gifts, practice saying thank you, again, because this is something that's new to the child. It's second nature to us because it's something we do every year. We've been doing it for many, many years. But for our young children, again, just being aware that this is a new experience for them. So doing what we can do to make that experience easier for them.

And that gets us through mitigating the challenges. Next, we're going to talk about increasing communication opportunities with our kids. And on the screen right now, you see a man holding a young infant child.

Full modeling. Modeling is really important when we're talking about increasing communication opportunities throughout the season. We want to model requests. So asking for things, model comments, model rejections, telling people no, and modeling expanded utterances. On the screen, you see a two-headed arrow that is going diagonally across the screen.

But when we're thinking about modeling in general, we want to model the language. The holidays bring about a very unique opportunity to increase our child's language, both receptive and expressive. So they're understanding their language, understanding in the language that they use. The holidays bring about this unique opportunity to use new vocabulary.

So we want to model the use of that vocabulary in our oral language. Maybe we are expanding our utterances. Maybe our child says, oh, daddy, look at the pretty Christmas tree and we expand the utterance to say oh yes, that is a very nice Christmas tree. It's decorated with red lights and white ribbons, things like that, just to expand the child's utterances, expand their vocabulary, giving them that model.

And then not just in oral language. It's really important to model if your child uses sign language, modeling the sign language so that they have that vocabulary in their repertoire to use throughout the holiday season. Modeling the use of language on augmentative and alternative communication devices, making sure that that vocabulary associated with the holiday season is on the augmentative and alternative communication device so that they can also participate in the holiday season.

Another big thing is environmental manipulation. So the holidays provide us as parents, it provides parents a very unique opportunity to manipulate the environment for the child. Now, the reason this is a great opportunity is because it gives us not just parents, but also service providers an opportunity to look at the child's goals on their IEP or their IFSP-- I'm sorry, for early intervention, the IFSP. Or if they're school-aged, the IEP.

But it gives us an opportunity to look at the goals on those documents and evaluate how our child is either attaining or not quite yet reaching those goals in an environment that is still the same environment, but it's been manipulated. The environment has been physically manipulated because there's new decorations everywhere. And so maybe things in the house have changed and shifted positions. If the child's goal was to use a three-word sentence and you notice that oh, wait a minute, my child's actually using four-word sentences, OK, cool, maybe we can come back after the holidays and change that goal, update that goal.

Or maybe my child is still using one-word utterances and I need to maybe have my therapist revisit this goal or revisit the techniques we're using to approach this goal. Again, these are things to think about. And the holidays bring about a unique opportunity to provide that evaluation, that informal evaluation.

Also, daily tools also change. So like the things that we're using during the holiday season. Daily tools, including toys. Maybe we're using switch adapted toys for one toy, maybe the bubble blower machine every day. But now that we have this dancing Santa, we're using a switch adapted toy for the dancing Santa and my child knows how to use that.

So just again, the holidays bring about this important and unique opportunity for our kids to display the skills that they are attaining or display other challenges that they're having, and gives us, as adults, a unique opportunity to brainstorm how we can further support our children in their development. And then there's also universal application of different things. So again, that switch that we're using for the bubble-blowing machine, but the child also understands that can be universally applied to use the same switch or different switch, but using that switch with the dancing Santa or the speaking Santa. I don't know, things like that. Or using that switch to turn the holiday lights on and off, things like that. It's a really unique opportunity.

On the screen, there is a switch adapted drum set for kids who have difficulty with fine motor skills so that they can play the drums as well. And then there are also clothespins on the screen. And the reason I put the clothespins on the screen is because I used to use them during early intervention, reading books with kids who have fine motor difficulties. Maybe they can't pinch the page and pull it, but they can at least grab the clothespin with the whole hand and pull it over to change the page while reading.

So just to summarize, again, environmental manipulation is phenomenal. The environmental manipulation that comes with the holiday season is a phenomenal opportunity for parents and service providers alike to evaluate the child's progress towards achieving their goals and think about other ways that they can help that child continue to develop.

Put a fun twist on routine activities. So reading. Maybe we're reading a book about the new year. So the picture it on the screen, it's the cover of a book called "Happy New Year, Spot" by Eric Hill. So we read every day with our kids. But maybe during the holiday season we read holiday books or we read new year books, things like that, things that are specific to the season.

We're singing holiday songs, sharing family photos. That's another really good opportunity to increase communication, looking at pictures from mommy and daddy when they were little kids and using those pictures to increase descriptive language skills or to just model the use of descriptive language skills. Or again, modeling the use of various signs for children who sign or various buttons on AAC devices for children who use those augmentative and alternative communication devices, making sure that they get that opportunity to have that vocabulary or get the vocabulary, and then use the vocabulary regardless of which medium they're using to communicate.

Again, the environment changes, so we can use that as an opportunity to talk about the changing landscape. We're talking about the things we see, the things we hear, the things we smell, the things we're tasting, right? How cold it is outside. Those are all unique opportunities for us to increase our children's language and our communication in general across the board.

Engage in media. We're watching holiday movies and holiday-themed TV shows like Charlie Brown's Christmas episode. I don't know the name of it, but whatever it is, we're watching things like that and engaging in that media, again, with taking time out to provide our kids with additional vocabulary to talk about the media, even if it's as simple as I like this or I'm not really feeling this. But again, the holidays are a perfect opportunity for adults to really pay attention to the progress that children are making in their goals and reevaluate the approaches towards attaining those goals.

And I did mention this a while back, but another fun twist on routine activities is just getting holiday-themed sensory aids. So whether that's like maybe, I don't know, a blue and white weighted blanket or a stuffed animal that wears a Santa hat, things like that, getting fidgets that are holiday-themed. These are great things to do or things to use during the holiday season to help increase communication.

And next up, we're going to review our community resources. We have a couple of community resources. One of them is TechOWL. So again, TechOWL is Pennsylvania's assistive technology state act program. We are closed December 23 through January 3. But prior to that date and after that date, please feel free to use us as a resource to help you figure out what types of assistive technology your child may benefit from just to help close the gap between your child's needs and their abilities so that they can fully access the environment around them and continue to grow and develop in ways that are beneficial to them.

Another resource is Vision for Equality. Vision for Equality helps all people with disabilities access services and engage in their community. So that includes children with disabilities. They help them and their families navigate the resources that are available, the services that are available, and navigate just interacting with the greater community around them.

And then for me personally, I wanted to include Rutabagas Toy Library as a resource here. I think it's a hidden gem over in East Falls. It's a toy library. You can borrow toys. You can go in there and just play for an allotted time-frame.

It is not advertised as inclusive to children with disabilities, but I've been there a couple of times and they are very welcoming to children with disabilities. And so it's a great place to take kids. Again, if you just got to get out of the house, maybe you go to the toy library.

There's also options such as Kids at Play, which is an indoor playground for children. And We Rock the Spectrum, another indoor gymnasium for children to utilize during the winter season or any time of year really. But yeah, all of these places have holiday-themed events going on, whether it's the New Year's Countdown. The Please Touch Museum also has a New Year's countdown coming up. They have storytimes. There's music. Maybe there are toddler meetups. Rutabaga Toy Library does have sensory-friendly toys for children who need them. And so that's another great resource, another great place to take your child.

Now for our in-person events, we did have a discussion. Because this is recorded, we do not have a discussion. But I hope that this entire presentation was helpful to all of you. If you have any questions, feel free to email me. My email address was on the slide earlier, but feel free to email me at meng-- m-e-n-g, dot, mclendon-- m-c-l-e-n-d-o-n-- @temple.edu. You can also reach me by phone at 215-204-6560 if you have any questions.

We are thrilled-- we're happy to be here to help you. We're thrilled to work with you. I am thrilled to be of service to you in any way that I can be. So please reach out if you need any help. But otherwise, I hope this was a great presentation. And I hope you enjoyed and learned something today. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.