Santas make visit joyful
Program facilitates less stressful experience for special-needs children.
A first-time visit to Santa can be traumatic for any child. You’ve seen the photos — screaming toddlers trying to escape from the gigantic figure in the bright red suit, his face almost completely obscured by long, white hair and beard.
“Add medical and cognitive issues on top of that and, yeah, it can go really, horribly wrong if you don’t go prepared,” says Marty Barnes, who runs clucampaign.org with her husband, Tim. The website is dedicated to promoting inclusion for special-needs children. Barnes has lots of experience with the subject. Her 6-year-old daughter, Casey, had a traumatic birth that resulted in severe brain injury.
“Before her, we had no experience at all with special needs,” Barnes says. “After we had her, we got thrown into a whole new world of doctors and specialists and specialneeds therapies and schools and programs and all kinds of stuff.”
Barnes quit her job and began around-the-clock care for her child. A few years ago, Casey was doing well enough physically that her parents no longer had to focus solely on medical issues and were able to turn more attention toward quality of life.
CLU Campaign was born out of a 2011 effort by Barnes to make Halloween more inclusive for special-needs kids. This year, the online community is celebrating Christmas on Dec. 15 from 1-3 p.m. at the Courtyard Marriott in the Arboretum. The event features holiday music, crafts, refreshments and, most important, photos with a “Sensitive Santa” who is prepared for visits with children who have autism or other cognitive impairments (The event is free, but space is limited. RSVP at clucampaign.org).
“A lot of kids with autism and things of that nature really don’t do well in big crowds,” Barnes says. “They don’t do well in lines.”
That’s problematic for a typical mall Santa set-up, where crowds, long lines, bright lights and loud noises are almost required. To accommodate children with special needs, Simon, a company with malls nationwide (including sev- Dale Roe is your Go-to Guy for useful information. He writes guides on everything from allergies to TV shows to local events to QR codes. What topics would you like to know more about? Send an email to droe@statesman. com.