Village & Autism Training

Village Training:
Sad news folks: Santa will not be rewarding elves with pins this year for good behavior. He is working on a new reward system, but Shortcake is very sad about this. Pins, despite being a reward system exactly like the gold star system utilized in kindergarten, were highly effective.

The one big change in the Village this year is that the Photo elf will be arranging the group photos instead of the Santa elf. This may take some getting used to, but it should be fine. Half the time, the Photo elf arranged the picture anyway.

Photo elfing came back, no problems. Santa elfing may take a little while, but it will be easier once it's busy.

Since Shortcake is a veteran, she elfed for about 10 minutes, and then pretended to be people coming to see Santa. This involved pretending to be a spoiled brat of a child with Upper East Side parents or a rich lesbian mom with a son or a non-English speaking family or part of a group with two families and one bossy mom demanding 5 pictures or a twin with gay dads.

Autism Training:
The first week after Thanksgiving, Santaland will open an hour early for an event, coordinated by Austism Speaks, wherein kids/people on the Autistic spectrum can come to see Santa. These families have to sign up ahead of time, and there are only five slots per half hour. Santa, elves, managers and straw bosses had to go through training, so they could make the experience as special as possible.

It pretty much comes down to staying calm and gentle. Speaking in a lower register was encouraged, as was making eye contact. The children (ages 3-15, as of Tuesday) will be accompanied by a parent, possibly an aide, and some might even have "normal" siblings with them. Elves should check in with the parent before physically touching the child, and also about using the flash photography, since people on the autism spectrum can be sensitive to extreme stimuli. Essentially, we just need to communicate with the parent/aide, and take our time. Luckily, since there are only five families per half hour, there is plenty of time to be had.

If the child has a meltdown, we were also told to just step back and let the parent/aide handle it. We can offer help, but otherwise it's best to stay out of the way.