Travelling with kids on the spectrum – and dealing with the inevitable holiday meltdown

If you follow me @reprobatemum on socials, it may not have escaped your attention that I’ve been away this past week in the breathtaking mountains of Amden and Walensee, Switzerland.

This was a bit of a special holiday because Ava has finished her GCSEs and Jonah is about to start uni, Tom is on gardening leave before starting a new job and I’m not working at the moment (unless you count going pro and managing my socials, which is more of a full time job than having a newborn, with only slightly less crying.)

The last time we had a holiday on this scale it was to Thailand, when Jonah and Ava were tweens. It was interrupted the week before we left with the news I was expecting Lana, which was a bit of a bombshell to say the least. I spent the ten-day vacation wondering if I could, would or should go ahead with the pregnancy, and it certainly wasn’t the ‘let-my-hair-down’ affair that it might have been otherwise.

Jonah, now almost 20, won’t go on holiday with us unless it has a suitable climbing destination, and it can be hard to meet everyone’s needs – Ava’s for rest and relaxation, , Lana’s for exploration and fun and mine for cool pools and mermaid waterfalls. But it’s credit to Tom’s planning skills and general desire to make us all happy that he found the ideal location – an hour from Magic Wood which is a boulderer (and actual) paradise, and overlooking the turquoise waters of Lake Walensee in a cute Heidi-chalet just an hour from Zurich. I thoroughly recommend it. I can even give you the Airbnb link as long as it won’t shoot the price up for when we want to go next. DM me on Facebook because you now, you can 🙂

There’s no getting away from the fact that holidays for families – especially when you have an additional, slightly unexpected third child, is really bloody expensive. And though we’ve never done it before, we decided it made sense to make the most of the fact the big onesno longer have school, and pay the fine to take Lana out of primary for a week than go in the height of summer, when the price would more than double. There’s nothing more guaranteed to pile on pressure to a holiday situation than having your eyeballs ripped out before you take off. And when you factor in the additional challenges of travelling as a neurodiverse family, going on holiday can actually be very stressful. Well, that’s my experience, anyway.

I was never more likely to lose my shit have a meltdown than as a working mum, trying to get everything over the line, everyone packed and to the airport (or to the campsite or wherever) and try to have a nice time than on the first day of the holiday. Factor in delays, uncomfortable travel, PMDD and things going wrong, and some holidays were more suicide than than sun, sex and sangria.

RM

I don’t use the word lightly. I have genuinely had more serious meltdowns in hotel rooms than almost anywhere else, including a really awful one (for poor Tom) when Lana was about six months old.Naturally exhaustion setting in, and she was teething a horror tooth on my boob (no kidding, it came through as a fang). We’d been stuck on the runway for four hours before getting to an all-inclusive in Ibiza. There was a code brown when we arrived. Our room was not ready, and was dirty when we got into it, everyone had neck tattoos, and I needed a rest and some anti-depressants. Instead, I had my first post-partum period and when you have got PMDD, that’s not pretty. It’s often when you are at your most wrung out, and you most need a holiday that we put ourselves through the stress of getting somewhere unknown and trying to keep everyone happy into the bargain.

As the meltdown I had this past week proved, putting your own needs last when it comes to holidays almost always guarantees that you’ll get tipped over the edge at some point. But rather than a ten-point list of dos and don’ts when it comes to travelling with a family in the spectrum (let’s face it, you can get that from an AI Google search), I will give you one piece of cherished advice:

Make sure you spend a bit of time doing what the fuck you want (whether it’s reading, playing scrabble or downing Jeigermeisters before hitting Creamfields – either way, make sure you spend a bit of time doing exactly what floats your boat. Or it’s not a holiday FOR YOU.

For the rest – in no particular order:

• Do not expect it to be perfect.
• Don’t worry about your wobbly bits – no one cares, really. Do recover – rope in whoever you can to hold the baby/ juggle the toddler.Screens are fine for over fives. just, for feck’s sake, make them wear headphones.
• Don’t overdo the Margaritas. Do have a bucks fizz at 11 am and sleep after lunch. Go nuts on the buffet.
• Let your teenager get bored. In Fact, it’s mandatory. Mandatory boredom.
• Bring earplugs and a mask on planes – they are brutal overstimulatory environments and budget airlines enjoy torturing their passengers with delays and duty free sales pitches. Block them out. Don’t let them win.
• Don’t let your kid kick my seat. Having said that, if they are dysregulated and stimming, explain this to passengers around you and if they give you *that look* let your child go for it with the kicking.
• Don’t be that person who does a really big wet sneeze on the flight. Fight it. Stifle it. Use antibacterial wipes if you can’t stop yourself. Give that person a hard stare and offer them some hand gel.
• Don’t lose it with Border Force – they aren’t making you take your belt off for fun. Flash your autism wristband if you can feel yourself starting to get icked out by the pat down. They are trained in dealing with disabilities -but they aren’t mind readers. Tell them.
• Get a national disability card and wristband – nice airline staff will let you use it to use the disabled queue (unlike the Swiss Himmler at Zurich who got really snotty at me when I tried to use it when we arrived)
• Forgive yourself if you have a meltdown. It happens and you’ll feel better if you move on rather than wallowing in it.
• Have an orgasm. I think it’s a meltdown reset button. Try it. It helps.
• Check your sunscreen against the Yuka app.
• Let your kids run free. Obvs, keep an eye on them in the pool, but the point is, don’t sweat the small stuff, and let the usual rules slide. Just not your sunscreen.
• Stay hydrated. Try to have fun. Whatever it is that floats your particular boat!

Here’s me doing just that, with shonky but pretty cute commentary from Lana:

Try and enjoy it! Family holidays are hard work, and harder with kids (and adults on the spectrum!) But making them more magic than meltdown is mostly down to you letting things slide – just not your sunscreen!

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