The UAE has a rich calendar of public holidays across the year. National Day in December. Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Islamic New Year. The Prophet's Birthday. These are meaningful cultural and religious events that families celebrate and communities come together around.
For many families of children with autism, public holidays bring a specific layer of planning because they bring changes to routine, changes to the family schedule, increased social demands, and often exposure to sensory-rich environments that are more challenging than daily life.
This post covers how to manage public holidays using ABA principles, so the celebrations can be genuinely enjoyable rather than something to be survived.
Why Public Holidays Are Challenging for Children With Autism
The challenges of public holidays for children with autism are not about the events themselves. They are about what the events do to the predictable daily structure that most children with autism rely on to stay regulated.
School is closed. The usual daily timetable disappears. Family members who are normally at work are at home. Extended family may visit or the family may travel to visit relatives. Social demands are higher than usual. Mealtimes may be at different times or involve different foods. Sleep schedules may shift. The sensory environment of celebratory gatherings can be significantly more intense than everyday environments.
Any one of these changes would be manageable. All of them arriving together across a multi-day holiday period creates a significant cumulative load.
Building a Holiday Routine Before the Holiday Starts
The most effective thing you can do before a public holiday is build a simple daily routine for the holiday period and introduce it to your child before the holiday begins.
This does not need to replicate the school-day schedule. It needs to provide enough predictability that the child knows roughly what each day will look like. Morning time, a midday activity, afternoon time, the evening. A visual schedule for the holiday days, even a simple hand-drawn one posted in a visible place at home, gives the child a reference point for the day that reduces the anxiety of complete open-endedness.
For longer holidays involving travel or extended family stays, introduce changes as far in advance as possible. A social story about visiting grandparents, or about what the family gathering will look like, gives the child a cognitive map of the unfamiliar situation before they have to navigate it in real time.
Managing Sensory Demands at Celebratory Events
Public holiday gatherings often involve noise, crowds, unfamiliar sensory environments, and social demands that extend well beyond what a child with autism typically manages in a day.
Plan for this proactively rather than reactively. Identify in advance which elements of the celebration are most likely to be challenging for your child. Have a quiet space available or identified at the venue where the child can take a break when needed. Bring sensory tools that help your child regulate, their ear defenders, a familiar sensory object, a preferred snack.
Build in planned breaks rather than waiting for dysregulation to signal that one is needed. A child who gets a ten-minute quiet break every hour in a busy celebration environment will sustain participation significantly longer than one who tries to manage the whole event without a break and eventually hits their limit.
Maintaining ABA Sessions During Public Holidays
For children who are currently receiving ABA therapy, maintaining sessions during public holidays, even at a reduced frequency, significantly reduces regression and makes the return to regular routines after the holiday easier.
Even a single ABA session during a multi-day holiday break can maintain key skills, provide a predictable anchor point in an otherwise unstructured period, and give the therapist clinical information about how the child is managing the holiday demands.
If full sessions are not practical, a brief home-based ABA activity using strategies the family already knows is better than no intervention at all during an extended break.
If you have concerns about your child's development, consult our BCBA or your pediatrician.
