Minimizing Holiday Chaos: Routine Management for Children with Special Needs

About this Webinar

For parents of children with special needs or disabilities, “spontaneous” and “carefree” are not words that can be associated with a holiday.

Holidays can be chaotic for children with special needs particularly due to unfamiliarity, sensory overload and a lack of usual support systems.  In a national survey released in November 2018, the New York University Child Study Center, reported that two-thirds (66%) of parents of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) agreed that getting their child back into a normal routine after time away from school is difficult and more than half reported being frustrated while helping their child through daily activities (Adamec, 2018).

Learning Objectives

In this interactive webinar we will provide caregivers with strategies to:

• Establish and maintain structure within the home for all year.
• Prepare children for changes and quick transitions to unfamiliar activities.
• Reduce the impact of unfamiliarity and sensory overload.
• Manage behavior during travel, family visits and social outings.

Presenter

Lakshmi Mahadevan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Extension Specialist, Special Populations
Family & Community Health
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service

Lakshmi Mahadevan has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Career Development Education from Texas A&M University. Her areas of expertise include career assessment, post-secondary options for individuals with special needs, special education and multicultural career counseling.

As Associate Professor and Extension Specialist – Special Populations, Dr. Mahadevan has over ten years of experience in conducting face-to-face and online professional development with educators in Texas addressing various special populations-related issues (particularly students with disabilities and English Language Learners). Her other activities include program evaluation, conducting workshops and presentations, preparing newsletters, creating webcasts and special interest web materials, maintaining and supervising the design of online modules, maintaining websites, liaison with stakeholders and experts, preparing evaluation reports, and providing technical assistance.

Continuing Education (CE) Credit

Click the button below for CE credit
You will be prompted to complete an evaluation after which a link will be provided.

Continuing Education

• Social Work, LPC, LMFT: Programming approval for 1.0 CE credits will be obtained for Social Work, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage & Family Therapists from the University of Texas at Austin, Steve Hicks School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK
• Case Manager: This program has been submitted to the Commission for Case Manager Certification for approval to provide board certified case managers with 1.0 clock hours.
• Certificates of completion are available for providers interested in documenting their training activities.
• For a complete list of our Military Caregiving courses for CE credit go to: Military Families

Event Materials

Webinar Flyer (PDF)

Presentation Slides (PDF)