I bought Elf on the Shelf a few years ago when I was in New York but I never used him the year I got him. The more I thought about it, I didn’t think our son would understand what was happening, so I put him away and we got him out this year.
The concept of Elf on the Shelf, is that Santa sends the elf to our house on the 1st December to watch the kids and he reports back to Santa on Christmas Eve, but each night when the kids sleep, the elf gets up to mischief! This involves parents trying to think of 24 things for the elf to get up to – thankfully there are a million ideas on Pinterest!! The kids are not allowed to touch the elf as this removes the magic.
I know that our son would struggle a bit with this concept, so we altered it slightly and made it our own. He arrived the morning after the Christmas tree went up – 9th December. I found a message board to use:
Elf on the Shelf Writable Board
The morning he arrived, he sat beside the tree and I just wrote, “Hello, Santa sent me to visit you”. Our son just looked at him, not really bothering with him. The next morning we hid him in the cupboard with the DVD’s. When our son got up, we said “Where is the elf?” He then started to look for him!
He found him, then put him back under the tree where he was. We continued to do this until Christmas day. The elf was hiding in the Christmas tree, on top of a photo frame, in the fridge sleeping in his yogurts……… He is supposed to go back to Santa on Christmas Eve, but we kept him and put him on our son’s presents on Christmas morning as if the Elf had brought them. It worked out well and hopefully next year will be even better.
Super Autism Mum 