KIDS’ CORNER

Kids’

CORNER

Christmas is finally here, Santa is coming, the decorations are hung, the kids are fuelled by advent calendar chocolate, and hopefully there is a pot of mulled wine warming on the stove for the parents. Christmas can be a very stressful time of year, juggling presents, family, food, decorations, and parties, not to mention entertaining the kids over the Christmas break. We have come up with a whole host of fun, creative activities that you can do with the kids this winter. These activities are designed to allow everyone to get involved and they will not cost the earth, so you don’t have to constantly worry about forking out the extortionate prices of literally any kid’s activity in December. We also look at the five Christmas gift rule as a way of balancing Christmas gifts for children this year. You can still make their Christmas magical, while getting them items they need and want. It’s a great way to reduce waste, save money and bring a little joy to your kids this year. You will find the usual selection of kid’s products on page 52, our regular instalment from Dan White and we hear from Scarlet Novak in our Future Voices column on page 55. We would like to wish you all a wonderful Christmas this year.

PRODUCTS

pg52

It’s Christmas!

BY ROSALIND TULLOCH

The most wonderful time of the year

It is certainly the most magical time of the year for children, with the anticipation of Santa, the excitement of presents, Christmas trees, parties and snowfall, kids can barely contain themselves at Christmas! It doesn’t help that most of them start each day with a chocolate from their advent calendar, there’s nothing like a sugar rush in the morning. Christmas can be an overwhelming time for families though, and this is especially true this year. Lists for Santa are growing ever longer, with expensive gadgets, smartphones, iPads and the latest games consoles putting even more pressure on families. Plastic toys also fill homes at this time of year as children are inundated with gifts from family members and friends – most of which will only be played with a handful of times, before kids lose interest and move onto something else. It is a wonderful thing to spoil children with gifts at Christmastime, but it can become too much and it can build unrealistic expectations for future occasions, it can also be very difficult to manage those expectations and find a good balance for present giving. There is a good rule that many families stick to this time of year, known as the four gift Christmas rule, but it has since evolved into the five gift Christmas rule and this fifth addition is open to interpretation.

Lists for Santa are growing ever longer, with expensive gadgets, smartphones, iPads and the latest games consoles

WHAT IS THE FIVE GIFT CHRISTMAS RULE?

The tradition of this rule began with four items to create a balanced gift giving experience for children, helping families to give gifts to their kids things that they have asked for and also gifts they know they need and will enjoy. The pledge they follow is: something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read. The fifth one has been added in a variety of ways, some use someplace to be to include a family experience, and some use it as a way to buy their child something special that they are not expecting.

1SOMETHING THEY WANT

Most kids have a main present at the top of their list, it might be a bike or a scooter, a smartphone or a swing set, a dollhouse or an art set. Hopefully it is within reason and within your budget to allow you to spoil them with this, but if it isn’t don’t be afraid to ask family members and friends who would usually buy them gifts to instead contribute towards their main present. This is a great way to spread the cost and it can help avoid a lot of unwanted gifts too!

2SOMETHING THEY NEED

As the parent you are fully entitled to decide what your child needs this Christmas. This gives you an opportunity to buy them something that you actually need to buy them anyway which saves you money in the long run! It could be that they need some new snow boots, or a new tennis racket, or a new set of colouring pencils, whatever it is they will be delighted and you will be happy that it is something you needed to buy anyway!

3SOMETHING TO WEAR

This is a great opportunity to buy your kids some clothes they not only want, but need. Buying them clothes is a really practical gift, but something they can also get excited by, especially if you know the style they like or if they have pointed something out. Use this to buy them an outfit to wear on Christmas day that will also be used at any other parties they are invited to for the next few months, or get them those trainers they have wanted for ages.

4SOMETHING TO READ

Some kids adore reading books, and some kids are not avid readers, but whatever their affinity for reading you will be able to find a book to suit their tastes. If they are not into fictional stories and characters, find a biography of someone they are interested in, or buy them a joke book or book of interesting facts. If that doesn’t appeal, consider a magazine subscription to something they will enjoy, there are some great educational and fun magazines out there and this is a gift that will keep on giving all year long.

5SOMETHING SPECIAL

Interpret this in any way you want. You could use it to plan an experience, like snowboarding or a visit to an adventure park, or use it to buy something you want your child to have that they haven’t even thought of asking for. It can be as big or as little as you want, it can be a thoughtful token or a trip to look forward to. You could give the gift of time by setting aside a special day for you and your child where they get to decide how you spend it. This is your way to give something extra special this year and it doesn’t need to cost you a penny.

Winter Fun

BY ROSALIND TULLOCH

Getting messy and creative for the holidays

This winter we take a look at some of the indoor activities that you can set up to keep the kids amused throughout December. These activities are all cost-effective and fun for the whole family, so everyone can join in. Just be prepared to get messy!

PLAYDOUGH SNOWMEN

Time to get a little messy and creative and make a family of fun playdough snowmen. You just need flour, salt, water and oil, with the optional addition of glitter if you want to make your snow look twinkly. There are many recipes for making playdough online to give you the correct quantities depending on much you need, you can also colour it with food colouring to make a whole rainbow of colours if you want to sway away from the traditional snowy white (maybe steer clear of yellow, no one likes yellow snow). Kids will love rolling it into balls to make the body and head for the snowman. They can then work on making the eyes and a carrot nose, and using buttons to decorate.

CHRISTMAS BAKING

Find a simple biscuit recipe to prepare (BBCGoodFood.com is always a good place to look for this), look out some Christmas cookie cutters and set out an array of sprinkles for kids to work with. Rustle up some icing by using icing sugar and a little water, adding to make the right consistency for letting kids spread over the biscuits. Using a range of Christmas biscuit shapes, from trees and baubles to bells and presents, you can encourage little ones to get as creative as they like with edible sprinkles. The best thing about this activity is that you all have a tasty treat to enjoy at the end.

MEMORY TRAY

The memory tray game is a great fun way to pass the time over the holidays, and you can even make it into a competition for the whole family! You can make this a festive themed game by ensuring all of the items you put on the tray link to Christmas or winter. Use items like baubles, chocolate Santas, tinsel, stars, candles, ribbon and anything else you can find around the home. Give children a minute to observe everything on the tray and then take it away and ask them to list all the items they remember from it. You could also remove the tray and take one item off before returning it and asking the children to figure out which item is missing.

MAKE SNOW

It is very unlikely we will have a white Christmas this year so we will have to make do with making our own snow! Making snow can be a great sensory activity to get children involved in, and it can be used for making pictures or creating snowy winter scenes. Mix equal parts of cornflour and bicarbonate of soda, then add a very small amount of water gradually until the mixture comes together and crumbles creating a snow-like consistency that can be sprinkled around.

CREATE A SENSORY SCENTED BOX

Sensory boxes are a fantastic tool to allow kids to explore their senses and they are fun to make too. Christmasthemed boxes can indulge the senses with a mixture of scents, textures and sounds. A great option to fill out your box with is dyed, scented rice and pasta, simply add dry rice and pasta to a bag with a splash of vinegar, some red or green food colouring and some peppermint essence for that wonderful candy cane smell. Lie the rice and pasta on a tray overnight to dry out then pop it in the box and find some fun items to add in for kids to play with. Mini baubles and tinkly bells are great additions, as are fluffy pom poms, foam shapes and toy stars. Introduce cupcake cases and little spoons to allow kids to scoop and fill the cases until their heart’s content.

MAKING SNOWFLAKES

Paper snowflakes are a wonderful activity that allow kids to get creative and practice their scissor skills. This simple activity only requires some scissors and some paper, but it can be wonderfully creative and fun. Encourage your kids to experiment with cutting different shapes out of the folded paper to see the different snowflakes they can make. You can then also go on to colour these in or add some glitter to make them sparkly and festive, and you can then decorate your windows with them too.

MARSHMALLOW SNOWMEN

These tasty treats are perfect for kids to create and eat straight away or add to a hot chocolate on a frosty day. All you need is marshmallows, chocolate chips for the eyes and buttons, fizzy laces for a scarf, an orange gummy sweet for the nose, a chocolate (maybe a Rolo) for the hat and pretzels for the arms. Simply melt a little chocolate in a bowl, add three marshmallows onto a wooden skewer stick and use the melted chocolate like glue to start decorating. Make hot chocolates and let the kids start melting their marshmallow snowmen in them for a tasty treat. This is definitely one for the adults to enjoy as well.

CHRISTMAS CARDS

Getting crafty and Christmassy can produce some wonderful and personal cards that can showcase children’s talents and develop their arty skills. This messy activity will get the creative juices flowing, and using a large array of craft items, glitter glue, pasta shapes and Christmasthemed confetti can create some beautiful cards. They can then be sent to family members to bring a smile to their face, we all know grandma and grandpa love a homemade card.

UNDERCOVER TAPE

Labels can irritate children, especially those with sensory sensitivities, and cutting the labels off can sometimes make the problem worse. Undercover Tape is a hypoallergenic, latex-free, self-adhesive tape that smooths over itchy or irritating clothing tags. Usable on delicate fabrics, it can last up to five wash and dry cycles on clothing.

02380 971 002 SensorySmart.co.uk Prices from £7.50

CHRISTMAS HOT CHOCOLATE SPOONS

Treat the kids to a luxurious hot chocolate this Christmas, that they can make all by themselves. Choose from a chocolate Santa, reindeer, or snowman, and all you have to do is heat up some milk and then let the kids dip their chocolate character in and stir until it melts, making a delicious hot chocolate treat. This makes a great stocking filler.

CocobaChocolate.com

Prices from £3.95

STOCKING FIDGET TOY

Looking for a festive-themed fidget toy? We have found these adorable sensory fidget stockings in a wide array of colours so you can find the perfect one for your little one at Christmas. The great thing is that you can play with them and use them as a mini stocking too.

LightInTheBox.com

Prices from £12

FUTURE VOICES

Each issue we will be shining a light on a young disabled person who is blazing their own trail. Whether that be campaigning for access, giving up their time to help their community, achieving success in the sporting or arts arena, or educating their peers on disability.

Part of me wishes I could go back and tell myself to stop pushing my body beyond its limits - that it’s OK to use mobility aids, even if I could technically go without them when it will do damage to my body to do so. Today, I use a cane around the house, and a rollator on my bad days. Most of the time when I leave the house, I use a power wheelchair. No hiding that in my backpack! Sometimes I still do experience shame and anxiety going in public with my mobility aids, but I’ve come a long way. I’ve worked hard to weed out the internalised ableism that had overgrown my thinking in my early days of using mobility aids. As I lost my unaided mobility, my mobility aids reconnected me to life, and I’m forever grateful for that empowerment.

SCARLET NOVAK

My hope for others who could benefit from mobility aids is that they will learn to overcome their own misgivings, using and loving the tools that help them live their best lives.

Scarlet Novak is a 24-year-old non-binary American. They are a disabled disability advocate, and mobility aid user, and are passionate about disability justice and empowerment.

Ihave been some form of disabled my whole life, however, I didn’t start using mobility aids until I was 19. I’m now 24 and in that time I have used: a cane, forearm crutches, a rollator, a manual wheelchair, and a power wheelchair. Many people, including some of my family, felt pity and in some cases shame that I use mobility aids. To be honest, at first, I also felt ashamed.

There is a lot of stigma surrounding the use of mobility aids, especially as a young person. My whole life, the media, news stories, and people around me made mobility aids out to be a tragedy and an absolute last resort. I remember when I started using a cane, I got a folding one, not for convenience but rather so I could hide it in my backpack. As someone with social anxiety, I’m already constantly worried about what people think. My need for mobility aids led to a lot more fears that people were judging me for using them. To put it simply, I had a whole ton of internalised ableism. For months I tried to get along without my mobility aids whenever I could, even if it damaged my body. Finally, I reached a point where I needed a mobility aid anytime I left the house. This was kind of a turning point for me. Reaching the point where I had no choice but to use my mobility aids shifted me into a state of acceptance. I got mobility aids that matched my style. I decorated my mobility aids with stickers and duct tape. I realized finally that mobility aids are a source of empowerment, rather than something to be pitied or ashamed of.

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DAN WHITE

COLUMNIST

Follow Dan on Twitter @Danwhite1972

Dan White, creator of the amazing Department of Ability superheroes and dad to Emily, who is 15 years old and has spina bifida, is a regular face in PosAbility, as he shares his experiences of life as a family with a disabled child.

THE GOOD FIGHT

Ihad hoped at the start of the year that with lockdowns becoming part of history and the promise of a golden summer, that 2022 would see the collective slow exhaling of stressed and anxious lungs from all over the country. However, little did we know that beyond the horizon there was another storm brewing and that its arrival would be catastrophic, this storm was the cost of living crisis. Since January, I have worked on seemingly nothing else. The big question though, is how did this crisis start? Well, blame the pandemic in the first instance. As well as tragically decimating the disabled community, with two out of three pandemic deaths being a disabled person, the pandemic had a negative effect on disabled people’s and carer’s physical and mental wellbeing. Lockdowns put consumer spending on hold, especially disabled consumers who to this day, are still wary of the outside world. When lockdowns were lifted, those not forgotten by the government rushed to spend the money they’d saved, but ongoing supply chain issues meant supply could not keep up with demand, driving up prices. Whichever way you look at it, the legacy of COVID was one of ableism with left us forgotten and exposed to catastrophe. The COVID enquiry which has just begun will no doubt point a finger of rightful blame at our leaders. Prices in the UK have also skyrocketed because of the Ukraine conflict. Russia is a major supplier of European gas, while Ukraine exports much of the continent’s grain and sunflower oil. So, the war has caused shortages and rising costs, particularly for food and fuel, and fuel of course is essential to our combined communities of care and disability as the equipment our children and disabled adults use eats energy, but is necessary for good physical and mental health. I have been hearing stories of people making terrible choices on what equipment to turn off to save energy, as well as disabled people on pre-payment meters self-disconnecting because they cannot afford to top up their meters. The help given financially by the state was so far distant from reality it was offensive. The effect of war and global supply on food is not unnoticed by disabled people and carers, I myself use the Trash Cafe in our local town but, for some, even that is not enough. The cost of living crisis has seen disabled people use food banks more than anyone else, and parent carers are skipping meals just so their disabled children can eat, the tragedy is that a weak, malnourished carer is putting both lives at risk.

All this has swept through this year like a chill, it’s like a nightmare story of cause and effect, with our community being the worst affected. From pandemic to poverty in less than 12 months.

However, where there’s tears, there’s hope. What I have seen this year is passion, solidarity and resistance, an incredible combined fight back on a massive scale, a unity, especially from charities and organisations that previously would not work with each other, now uniting to say no more. I have seen families from all ethnic backgrounds plan and campaign, I have witnessed communities support each other, a real belief in helping and enabling. Even as a policy and campaigns officer I have never been given so much support from backbench politicians and opposition members to my relentless work. I have been astounded by the giving of time and money to families and people from all over the country, this gives me hope that although 2023 will not start as a clean slate, it will shake the system into providing better financial and physical support. But what for now? Well, the best Christmas presents would be the inflation increase of benefits happening now, a new fixed social energy tariff for disabled people and carers, the banning of pre-payment meters, the rise of carer’s allowance to be on par with the minimum wage and for the decision makers to sit down with me, admit their errors, indulge their hidden humanity and ask, “what can be done?”

Merry Christmas all, 2023 will be a rough ride, but we will never give up, never give in, we are owed a future and we are fighting for it.