COVID Christmas
Zowie Kaye
My Big Fat Greek Family – we love our food and love each other even more. We're a like liquorice allsorts, all a bit different. I’m a full time wor...
We love Christmas in our house, Cameron is now 12 and it is his 3rd grown up Christmas in the sense that he knows “the truth”.
Good job really as this year his big present isn’t obtainable, and we just had to have that honest and open frank conversation that this year as it has been up until this point…. Will just be a little different.
I remember when he was younger and we would do “The List”, the success rate of this varied and it took us a few years to get it right and to adapt to our sons ASD mind.
One year I got everything on the list – AND MORE, imagine my horror Christmas morning as he declared to me and to family members “I didn’t ask for that, it wasn’t on my list”.
Trying to explain that people will buy you gifts because they love you and its rude to seem ungrateful, his little face full of concern whilst he apologised and said “I’m not being rude mum I’m just saying I didn’t ask for it”.
And in his mind, that’s perfectly logical.
So the year after we stuck to the list – I knew in advance we would be doing so and made sure he added everything he wanted.
Our close family were happy to pick up some of the list items as gifts for him and that Christmas was……………. “THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER”!
So the year after I wanted to start preparing Cameron as he grew about the meaning of gifts and how people will buy you things that they think you would enjoy and appreciate.
I said to him “how about this year, we don’t do a list and see what surprises Santa and everyone buys you”, this was no doubt quite a cautious ask and could literally go one way or another.
It was though a resounding success and another “amazing Christmas”.
I know it was the right choice as the year after Cameron asked, “can I have surprises again this year mum instead of doing a list”.
So back to this year; the unforgettable 2020, he’s basically a young grown man now.
He is thoughtful and considerate and has so many of the decent qualities that I worried he would struggle to develop or understand.
He grew so much during lockdown and whilst home schooling/working was stressful – I loved the time we all had indoors keeping safe.
My anxiety has been through the roof when I had tried to get him this year’s latest gaming console and I might as well be trying to source him a real-life unicorn.
My husband said, “lets just explain it to him”.
So we sat him down and said this year has been tough and at one point the whole world was shut doing manufacturing wise and so our plan to get you this gift so far has not been possible and its unlikely we will succeed.
He said, “wow well that sucks but thank you, I understand, I can wait”.
We explained that we wouldn’t probably see all the family like we usually would and have the gathering/parties either but that once the world gets back to normality then we have the time to do all those things again.
This year……… will just be a little different.
