The Magic of Christmas and Failed Expectations
By Julie Hornok

Christmas is supposed to be magical. When we are little, we spend hours dreaming about the wonderful gifts waiting for us on Christmas morning. Our wish list is long, and our hopes are high. We even convince ourselves that an old man with a big fat belly flies around and gives every good little boy and girl in the whole world presents all in one night. We can’t sleep the night before, and we are giddy with anticipation for the morning to come!

Somehow as we get older the magic in life seems to slowly disappear. We become so focused on fixing our children with autism that we don’t have the time or energy to even think about magic. Magic to us is finding the money to pay for a new food dehydrator for a new diet for our kids or pencil grips to help our child’s handwriting!

So, how does someone find the magic in their adult life? Some say we re-live it through our children. But what if my child with autism has no ability to understand all the things I love about Christmas? What if she flat-out refuses to participate in all the traditions that bring me joy?

When Lizzie was about 4-years old, I had high hopes for Christmas. It had been a devastating year for us as the reality of all that autism had stolen from our child set in. But, she had been in therapy for two years and was making some progress. I was sure that since she was older and was doing a little better that somehow she would enjoy all I was going to plan for our family for Christmas. After all, kids can just sense the excitement of the Christmas season, right?

Wrong. Lizzie wasn’t interested in helping with the tree, nor did Santa’s Village excite her. Christmas caroling and Secret Santa didn’t happen. It wasn’t that she threw a fit or jumped on top of the tree and tore off the ornaments or anything drastic. She just simply didn’t notice. She didn’t notice and didn’t care what we were doing. The only thing she was interested in was her pink telephone. She spent all day, every day picking it up over and over and each time she would say, “Heellllooooooo” to no one in particular.

A few days before Christmas, I was feeling sorry for myself. The memories of past Christmas and birthday failures started flooding back. I remembered the birthday when Lizzie cried her whole party and hid in her room from the guests. I remembered the birthday that I had to put her favorite teapot on top of the cake just to get her to sit long enough for my family to sing to her. I remembered at that same birthday when she ignored all the toys and guests and stood up on top of a box stimming in her beautiful pink party dress. I remembered her going into an hour-long tantrum because the shopping cart someone gave her was taking too long to put together.

And I remembered the events of Lizzie’s 4th birthday when Lizzie refused to open her presents. I had to sit her down with her favorite pink phone next to the presents. I then opened the presents with enough excitement to hopefully mask the fact that she had no interest in the gifts or the guests that came to the party.

Why was I pretending for the party guests? You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole. Lizzie was the square peg, and why was I constantly trying to shove her in that round hole over and over again? This was supposed to be a magical time for her and by forcing my expectations, the traditional birthday and Christmas expectations on her, I was only causing her stress.

From that day on, I decided to create magic her way. After Lizzie went to sleep on Christmas Eve, I took all her favorite toys from her room and wrapped them up. I also wrapped up her favorite snacks. Her eyes lit up as I showed her the joy of opening presents with something I knew she would love - presents that were familiar and predictable.

Instead of a birthday party, I took her to the Dallas World Aquarium. Just the two of us at the aquarium watching the black jaguar pace back and forth over and over and over again. The pace of the panther was familiar and predictable. The joy on her face told me that I had found her magic, and somehow I began to feel the magic too!

I realized that it wasn’t the traditions of Christmas that created the magic; it was finding something that brought my child with autism joy – no matter how untraditional it was.

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Julie Hornok has been married to her wonderful husband, Greg, for 14 years and is the mother of three children, Andrew, Lizzie and Noah. Lizzie was diagnosed with moderate autism at 2 years old and now, at age 8, is mainstreamed in school and enthusiastically enjoys relationships with friends and family. Julie feels blessed that her daughter has come so far and enjoys spending her free time helping moms with a new autism diagnosis and sharing the small bits of wisdom she has learned along the way. Julie also loves to give back to the community by putting together special needs events.