How we got our autistic son to have a snowball fight

Fighting and rough play is something I'd usually associate with my autistic kids.  Both Anthony and David crave physical contact, and Anthony in particular is a bit participate in any sort of play fighting, whether that's with lightsabers, bop gloves or plain old rough and tumble adventures. Except of course when it came to snow ball fights, "I can't mum, I get too cold."

It's fair enough - most kids get cold hands when they play with snow, but there's something pretty magical about it too. Yesterday, the snow was big and fat, and managed to lay on the ground for a good few hours.  As Jane came through the front door she ran straight through to the back door to get into the garden.  She was desperate to play, but her older brother, Anthony, was adamant. He was not going out in the cold.

Anthony's body interprets temperature differences a bit differently to me and Jane.  Part of his autism manifests in difficulty with temperature.  He won't get in a bath if it's not a good temperature for him, and when it comes to snow - he's excited about how it looks but not necessarily about touching it. Put simply, he feels the cold to a point that could be considered painful.

But, instead of sighing about the fact that one child is desperate to play with the other in the snow and can't, I had an idea.  I made warm snowballs.

You read that right... although it would be more accurate to say I made warm Snoballs from Zimpli Kids.  It's a small pack of powder that you add just over a litre of water to.  The powder then expands and turns into white 'snow' that you can mould into snoballs.

I had a look at the instructions and figured I could probably add warm water instead of just cold water out the tap and that's what I did.  Voila, warm snoballs.

I had the battlepack which comes with four pouches of powder - but I used one pouch each for Jane and Anthony.  It expands quite a lot so I made some in a pig saucepan and some in one of my baking bowls.  The kids stood in the garden with a bowl of 'sno' each and had a brilliant time making warm snoballs and throwing them at each other.

No gloves required.  No cold hands.  No cold splats.  It's irritant and stain free too so I didn't have to worry about their skin or clothes.  Thankfully no one tried to eat it.  Some got into the house when I opened the back door, which I just cleared up with up a dustpan and brush - it's very slippy if you don't get it all.  And the rest in the garden just degrades so can just melt away with the real snow when it goes.

And best of all, my kids played in the snow for ages. Of course the great thing is they could do this any time of year, but given the weather over the last 24 hours, I'm glad I've still got two packs left!

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