Hi, welcome to my channel. I'm filming this in the run-up to Christmas but it's
going to be equally relevant throughout the year, with thinking about presents of
any kind, whether it be Christmas or birthday. This film is for those of us
who struggle to think of what to buy for the people that we love. And that can be
because that person has a condition like dementia or a significant learning
disability or a complex physical disability that means, maybe the obvious
things for someone of their age or someone with their interests you can
typically buy them. If you're looking for some advice and ideas around gift buying
for someone in your life who has a disability or condition then stay tuned
and I'm going to share with you what I know.
Gift-buying and choosing can be difficult at the best of times. Some of
us love going out present shopping, and some of us hate it. Some of us find it
really challenging. And when you throw into the mix the fact that you're buying
for somebody who has a disability or condition, who, somebody maybe who can't
tell you the sorts of things that they want, who maybe can't physically access
some of the things that their peers might be using, then that makes it even
harder. Something that I've found a challenge over the years is that I have
two children; one of them is neurotypical and one of them is, has a disability. And
it's really hard to have this concept of being fair. If you have a disabled
child it's really not achievable to be fair to all of your children, however
many you have. Because you can't be fair in terms of, maybe the holidays you
go on or the things that they do after school, and maybe you can't be fair about
gifts either. So if you've always had in your head that you want to spend
£100 on each of your children every Christmas, but if you can't think
£100 worth of things that they need or want or would enjoy, then maybe
we need to think about this idea that they don't get the same. And if that
feels really awful for you, you can't bring yourself not to give them an equal
value of gifts, then maybe what you could do is give them £40 worth of gifts
and put £60 in their bank account. Another little nugget that I learned,
when James was quite young actually, was I would feel really bad about suggesting
ideas for people to give James which were things I wasn't really sure would
work. And I really don't know whether it's going to hit the mark, whether he's
gonna be able to use it, whether he's gonna be interested whether it will get
lobbed across the room. And actually what I think is you just need to try. Unless
you try you maybe don't know, and there are probably people who are hounding you
for ideas about gifts; just give them the ideas.
And if it doesn't work find a new home for it. It may be that you need to think
about giving money. Now some people find that difficult to ask for, some people
don't like to gift money to people. But for us it's worked really, really well
over the years. And that's not because we're trying to build up some nest egg
for James when he's 18, although there's nothing wrong with that, but it's more
because we've found that things crop up over the year. And if I sit down now and
think, right okay, Christmas is coming up in a month, I need to come up with a list
of things that James would like for Christmas. It can be really hard, because
there might not actually be anything that he wants or needs right now. So to
have a little bit of cash that can go into his bank account, and then in
February if something crops up and I go, oh no, that would be great. I can buy it
with his Christmas money, and I can even let the person that gifted it to him
know, and say you, know that Christmas money that you gave James? Well we have
bought this with it, or we've taken him there. Kind of tied in with money, as in
not being stuff, is the idea of gifting experiences. We love gifting and
receiving experiences in our family, and it can be anything from cinema vouchers,
it could be, if you're young person or the person that you love loves
going to concerts, it could be a voucher for concerts? So vouchers and experiences.
Let's say for, even for argument's sake you think maybe the person that you
love would like to try horse riding. So maybe they could get a voucher for a
horse riding lesson. So if I go on now to actual ideas. This video isn't about
giving you a shopping list of actual physical items that I would suggest.
Because everybody is different, and that's the thing isn't it. That's what
makes this so hard, is that all the people that we love, that we want to buy
for you have a disability, are so different. And so we can't just, you know, write
a list of ten things and say go buy these, this will be great. Otherwise this
wouldn't be so hard. So what I'm more, I suppose going to give you is, a couple of
just general ideas. So number one is practical things. My daughter is
absolutely gutted because when she was young she never had label clothes, I just
wouldn't go there. And now James is the best-dressed boy. Reason being is that
when he goes and socialises with other young people, they have some
connection. Someone might come up to him and go, James I love your shoes, they're
cool; and it's a connection. So I don't have any problem with buying James label
clothes anymore, and it's a great way for him to have lovely birthday and
Christmas presents. The other great category of gift-giving, for actually any
age, is sensory items. Because any of us, I mean if you think lots of us love to
light a smelly candle, which is a sensory experience, it's all about smell. So sensory
items are a great gift idea for all ages and all abilities. There's lots of fab
websites out there selling purely sensory toys and sensory items and
they're usually specialist. And because they're specialists they very often have
a price tag attached to them, they're more expensive. So I would suggest if you
see something, and you think that looks brilliant, just make sure you shop around
a little bit. So for example, if you see a really nice bubble tube, you can get them
with fishes and all sorts, they're beautiful colored lights. Just be careful
because if you see those on a specialist sensory website shop you may pay double
what you'd pay if you found it in a toy shop, or Argos or somewhere, on Amazon. So
just be a bit careful that you don't get suckered into it being "special", be
careful you don't pay that disabled tax on things like that. As far as actually
giving the gift, that's another one that we've struggled with over the years. My
son is just not the slightest bit interested in opening presents. Which
actually is a real challenge on a day like Christmas day because everybody is
together, we're all sharing this experience of sharing and giving and
receiving gifts, and opening them, and the excitement of opening gifts. And James
couldn't give two hoots about opening a present. And that can actually be quite,
quite upsetting as a parent. And, when you say it, it
sounds bit silly, because you think, well, doesn't really matter if he doesn't like
opening a present. But because it is such an experience, and it's such a part of
the day, it is difficult, I'm not gonna lie, I find that quite hard. So I've tried
to, over the years come up with strategies for how to deal with that.
Usually present opening for James lasts way more than a day.
So Christmas presents are still lying there two or three days after Christmas
day for James because he's just not interested, birthdays are the same. One idea I have
come with, and I don't know, it's so obvious,
and I don't know why I haven't come up with it before; is to use gift bags. Alright.
So James has the physical ability that he can pull something out of a bag, so
this year everything is going to go into gift bags. Not wrapped in a gift bag, not
covered in anything, literally gift in a bag. So all he's got to do is take it out.
It may be that you just don't wrap gifts at all if if that's the same for your young
person, whether or not they don't like opening, or they physically can't open a
gift. Maybe you could put it underneath the blanket or something, and whip the
blanket off, and "ta da" or just not bother. It depends where you are on this
continuum of finding that hard and emotional or not. For me, I'm going to
stick with the gift bags this year and see if that works for us. Other ideas
that we've had in the past about things like labeling. If the person that you're
giving to can't read their name, how about printing out photographs of them
then and stick them on to the front of the parcel so they can find their own
gifts. The other thing about wrapping gifts is, and again you'll know if this
is relevant for the person that you're giving to; take the, put the batteries
in, take the packaging off, so it is literally ready to go as soon as you
open the present. Just beware of course, you won't then be able to return
something. So if you're not sure whether it's going to be right, or whether you
might get a duplicate, or you're going to want to return something, obviously
don't take all the packaging off and rip it up and throw it away. It may be that
the person you're giving gifts to actually just
doesn't like the razzmatazz, doesn't like the attention, or the
unpredictability of gift-giving. Sometimes Christmas, full stop, might just be a
flippin nightmare, because there's no routine. If they used to going
school everyday, school stops. There might be new people coming in and out of the
house all the time. So christmas may just be a rough time
for you, and I don't really have a magic answer to that. Other than make it your
own, and try not to be suckered into this idea of having the picture-perfect,
traditional Christmas, where you all do the Elf on the shelf, and you all have
you know, your trips to see Santa. If that's not for you, then please don't
feel that you need to do it. Christmas should be a time of family and
love and giving and sharing, if that's your thing. It shouldn't be about
trying to conform to some Instagram ideal. And that's, it's really easy for me
to say that now, come Christmas Day it's a bit different. But if we can even
get slightly towards this idea of making Christmas right for you, then I
think that helps a little bit. So I hope that's helped in some kind of way. I
think, yeah, it would've been easier if I could have given you a list, and you know,
scroll down below and there's a, you know, a load of links to Amazon for all these
different presents that you can get. But that's not realistic and in fact that's
the point isn't it. Is that, you know if we could make it that easy it would be
easy. So I hope that's been helpful. If anybody has got any additional things
that work for them, some tips and tricks, please do put them in the comments below.
It's fantastic, people are writing comments on the Facebook group and
that's great. But if you put comments below the YouTube video then anybody
who's watching that can scroll down and get ideas as well. So if something
particularly works for you, or you have got an item that you think
everybody should know about, again put that down below
because it might help somebody. So if you're watching this in November of 2018
have a fantastic Christmas! Otherwise I hope you manage to find a great gift
the person that you love.
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