Providing comfort and joy through silence

For the first time, the Maine Mall is offering a low-stimulant Santa session for children with autism

SOUTH PORTLAND — Although it’s the center of activity during the Christmas season, the Maine Mall is not forgetting youngsters who may be averse to the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.

From 8-10 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 1, the mall will hold it’s first-ever “Sensitive Santa,” session, providing a quiet atmosphere before regular mall hours for children who want to meet Santa, but who may have difficulty with noisy environments. The seating, intended for children with autism or hearing loss, will take place at Santa’s Train Set, located near Sports Authority. The Maine Autism Alliance will be on hand with resources for families.

“The train set will be turned off, Santa has been prepped and the lights will be dimmed,” said the mall’s marketing coordinator, Stepfanie Millette, on Monday. “I was looking for different events we could do for families and I think this may be helpful.

“It’s not something we ever realized here before this year that a child may be restricted from coming to see Santa because of the mall’s environment,” said Millette. “Just by being a mall, we present some restrictions to kids with certain conditions.

According to Kristen Lewis, an occupational therapist at Easter Seals of Maine, which provides services to children and adults with disabilities, including autism, the still-mysterious condition can make meeting Santa a memorable experience for all the wrong reasons.

“Children with autism tend to be highly, overly sensitive,” she said. “Their senses – sight, sound, smell, touch – can be easily overstimulated. They can be easily districted in something like a shopping mall. It can be just too much for them to handle.”

Of course, that can be true of people without special conditions, as well.

“I’ll be honest with you,” said Lewis. “I haven’t taken my child to see Santa because even I get over stimulated, just from the crowd. And meeting Santa can be scary for a child. I mean, here’s this big stranger in a big beard and funny costume, that’s very intimidating.”

Still, Lewis said she “absolutely loves” what the Maine Mall is trying to do.

“Parents will want that Santa experience so badly for their child, so they’ll try it anyway,” she said. “But for a child with autism, that can be way too much for their little systems to handle and they just cannot physically enjoy it.”

 The result, says Lewis, can range from the typical tantrum freak-out almost any child might display, to a seeming shut down of all interaction with the outside world.

“Honestly, every individual is different,” said Lewis. “We don’t really know how people with autism view or experience the world, we only know they are not able to react to the societal norms that we have established. There’s a lot of research happening out there, but what exactly causes it is still unknown at this time.

What is know, however, is that there has been a sharp increase in autism in recent years, both nationally and in Maine.

Suzanne Godin, superintendent of the South Portland School Department, has noted that her district had fewer than 10 children with autism when she landed the job eight years ago. Today, it has 61.

“Honestly, we really don’t know what’s driving that,” said Godin, at a recent school board retreat.

The same is true in Scarborough, which this year hired a half-time autism specialist, because, says Special Services Director Alison Marchese, the district has 57 students identified with autism, up from eight just a few years ago.

Some of the increase has come from services like Easter Seals or Spurwink, losing clients to the public school systems that have become more adept at dealing with the disorder. But the numbers seem to show more a simple demographic shift.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 88 children can now be identified with an “autism spectrum disorder.” That’s a 78 percent increase from the CDC’s first Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network study done just five years ago.

Reasons for the spike are a mystery, according to the CDC, although it allows that ”some of the increase is due to the way children are identified, diagnosed, and served in their local communities,” while, “it is likely that reported increases are explained partly by greater awareness by doctors, teachers, and parents.”

Chicago-based General Growth Properties owns more than 130 retail sites across the nation. Based on growing autism awareness, two of GGP’s Midwest malls last year staged “really successful” events working in cooperation with local autism awareness groups, Millette said.

“They were able to send to me really good notes on what works and what doesn’t work,” said Millette. We’re taking our notes pretty seriously from other centers, but it’s a total test run. I have no idea what to expect.”

During Sensitive Santa time the doors will have opened to “mall walkers,” but the gates will not yet have gone up on any stores. Therefore, there is no sales benefit to staging the event. But also, there are no obstacles.

“If it's not taxing our resources at all, they why not make that available?” said Millette. “There’s no sacrifice for us to take down those barriers to children with autism or hearing problems. We just gain the happiness of a kid that gets to see Santa that morning.”

Lewis says the mall is on the right track, but suggests that, because some children with autism have tactile issues (sensitivity to touch), an effort might be made to limit the crowd size even further. Millette, who says she has reached out to various autism groups in Maine, received six inquires from interested parents on Monday morning alone, and expects upwards of 200 at the inaugural event.

“I wonder if there is anything they can do to keep the crowd not so crowded,” said Lewis.

“This is one of those interesting things where you hope for a crowd that’s not that big, because that would defeat the purpose,” agreed Millette.

Among the concerns is that parents who do not have children with autism will try and crash the event just to avoid long lines at Santa’s more traditional meet-and-greet.

“We have been careful about advertising,” said Millette, noting that the mall can hardly screen children for the disorder on site. “You want to make sure the families who are receiving the invitation are the one who have children with that need.”

If demand warrants, the mall may expand the Sensitive Santa program next year. Still, Millette said, she expects the best, if only because this year’s Halloween events included more than 1,000 pumpkins for Cape Sunshine that went unmolested despite what must have been a very strong temptation to local teens.


“I think people can be a lot more respectful that you might expect,” said Millett. “I think people are more good that we give them credit for, even in a mall.”