Preparing Your Special Needs Child for Halloween

I will just start with I love Halloween everything about it but for a lot of parents with special needs kids they are experiencing anxieties, intense behaviors and sensory overloads. For us Riaan doesn’t mind the scary costumes or walking in the dark but the actual costume can be the biggest struggle.

Lets face it costumes are itchy, cheap fabric, require things to be over your face or on your head. Riaan hates all of that so we stick with things that require none of the above but people still know what he is. A cowboy, cop, a zoo keeper or skeleton. All these items come in a soft cotton, requires nothing on the head, isn’t itchy and easy to identify because the last thing I would want is my son with a speech delay to be asked 25 times what he is and he wouldn’t be able to answer.

We are lucky that Riaan doesn’t love candy the way most kids do or your child may be on a special diet and cant eat all the goodies they recieve on Halloween.So to avoid lots of candy we have adapted something called “ The Sugar Sprite”. Oh you have never heard of The Sugar Sprite? She is a pretty fairy who is related to Tinkerbell that you leave your candy out for and she brings you fun things like art supplies or last year she brought Riaan a new movie.

My best advice for surviving Halloween is to prepare your child for Halloween. Explain everyone will be dressed up and why. We choose to in our family to talk about how it is all pretend and it can be fun to pretend and dress up like the things we like.