Having four children in a family will keep everybody busy, but when two of the four children have additional needs, it more than likely means spending even more time on your toes.

Arklow's own Anita Nolan told Ray D’Arcy what Christmas is like in the Nolan household. Two of Anita’s children – 11-year-old Mason and Donnacha, who’s 6 – are autistic and Donnacha also has an intellectual disability.

But the first thing that Anita wants to talk about is Little Warriors, a support group in Arklow for families that have children with additional needs.

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The group meets every week for support and sensory play and also organises activities and events throughout the year. For parents of children with additional needs, the group is a game changer:

"We just offer families a safe space to come and meet other families that are going through the same things, that just get it and to experience things like an Easter egg hunt or visit Santa or do a pumpkin patch in a safe and friendly environment, that if your child gets upset or has a bit of a moment or overwhelmed, that no one is going to batter an eyelid."

They just, as Anita says, get it. And what a relief for parents of additional needs children to not have to worry about their child causing a scene or upsetting people on top of everything else. The parents in Little Warriors also have your back when it comes to keeping an eye on the more adventurous kids in the group:

"My son, he loves stripping and he loves climbing things. Like if he can get his foot in it, he’ll climb it. So I’m constantly on edge having to run after him going, 'Oh! Get down off that.’ But when I’m with Little Warriors, there’s always another parent and you’ll always hear someone going, ‘It’s okay, Anita, I’ve got him'."

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When it comes to Christmas, Anita says all her children adore the decorations and especially the lights, but Donncha is a standout:

"He just adores – especially if they twinkle. Like, not the really, really fast one, but like, it’s kind of like, it kind of moves with the music sort of thing? It’s real twinkling and magical. He’s just fascinated. His whole face lights up and he does all these little happy stims."

Donnacha’s love of lights and decorations has meant that the Nolan family home, which used to be, in Anita’s words, "a grotto," has had to reduce its Christmas decoration levels over time because Donnacha kept getting himself entangled in them. And when it came to the tree, his adoration levels went up a notch:

"He would climb it, he would try to get into it, he has sat in it, he would try to get underneath it. So much so the last two years that he has broken [our] Christmas trees. And, yeah, we were really, really just kind of like, ‘What are we going to do? We can’t put a tree up.’"

As Christmas 2024 loomed, Anita and her husband Dennis were discussing their options and how they were going to approach the festive season without a tree when Anita had a brainwave:

"Do you know what – let's just build him a tree. Let’s just build him his own tree that he can sit in."

Anita went online looking for inspiration. She needed a tree that Donnacha could sit in without hurting himself and without breaking the tree. She saw lots of examples of people putting up teepees and wrapping them in tinsel and other festive decorations.

Anita thought that was a good idea, but she worried that it wouldn’t be strong enough to withstand Donnacha’s affections. So she and her dad, Jack, went to the DIY store in Arklow:

"We bought wood and we got some wooden poles and yeah, we built a seven-foot wooden teepee in our sitting room and we wrapped it in tinsel and lights. And now he has his very own Christmas tree that he can now sit in – he can actually stand and twirl in it as well. He is living his best life right now."

You can see a video of the tree on Instagram by clicking here.

Now Donnacha has a safe Christmas tree that he can hang out in and the family has a huge, colourful Christmas teepee to brighten up the sitting room. And it was, as Ray says, built with love.

Anita hopes that her Christmas teepee tree – which has attracted tons of views on TikTok – will inspire other families with similar tree issues to make their own version. Donnacha’s got all he wants for Christmas and maybe some other kids will get that too.

You can hear Ray’s full chat with Anita by clicking above.