Let There Be Light

Just some random things I learned recently:

I was reading this fascinating article (How To Design a Calming Room For Autistic Kids) to try and figure out if there was a way for me to make our home more suited to my children's needs. What I learned astounded me.  I did everything wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, but not the best. My kids share a bedroom and I wanted to paint it fun colors to fit both boys and my daughter. So I painted the bottom half purple and the top half bright yellow.  As for my living room I painted it start white the week before I had back surgery (about a year and a half ago) and I've hated it ever since. Thanks to this article I learned that neutral tones and muted colors work best not to over-sensitize my special needs children.

One of the other things I learned was that autistic children react better to LED lights rather than regular or fluorescent lights.  Fluorescent lights especially bother special needs kids because of the electrical hum it gives off. 

So in order to help our kids feel more calm at home we are doing little projects over the next year or so to modify things around the house.  The first thing we did was hold a gourmet cupcake sale to earn money for a little porch swing to help our children get the proprioceptive movement they crave.  Today the swing came in the mail, so tomorrow we get to put it together.  I'm so excited.

Secondly, my husband replaced our dining room light fixture today and put in new LED lights.  Suddenly all the other rooms in the house look a sickly yellow while our dining room is this beautiful white light.  I guess we'll have to work to replace the rest of the lights slowly over time (LED lights are not cheap but use less power and last longer).

So if you have special needs kids, especially those on the Autism Spectrum, you might want to look around your house to see if there are little tweaks you can do that will help make life a little more calming for your little one.  As for me, I'll keep you posted as to how our three kids react to the changes we're making.

Good luck and remember, you are an awesome parent.