A successfull holiday - tips from our trip with our autistic son and neurotypical daugher

How we had the first successful family holiday in the last three years

We spent the half-term break of May 2024 in a holiday village in Belgium, close to where some of our family live. It was fun! It was enjoyable! It was not as relaxing as a week on the shoreline basking in the sun and a good book, but it was fulfilling and nurturing for our family bonds.

The holiday is in stark contrast to the previous ones, when we often returned home completely spent, willing the holiday to end on its second day.

How did we manage that? Luck and our autistic son’s development played a part. But we made two deliberate changes in the run-up to the holiday:

1. We changed our narrative of the holiday. Rather than bracing ourselves for another seven days of survival away from home, we said it was an excellent opportunity to spend quality time with the four of us and the extended family that would be nearby.
2. We used artefact cards to jot down activities we could do to keep our son engaged and happy most of the time. We used three colours: one for me, one for my wife, and one for others/the entire family. The idea was to alternate between carers and use the cards as memory prompts when we were running low on juices.

In the end, we only used the cards a little. Still, we did implement the principle of alternating the caregiver and planning the next activity before the current one ran out of fun-generation power. Our son was mainly in the green, and our daughter actively participated in planning and managing her brother’s mood. We were often surprised by how smooth and relaxed we felt.

These changes were in addition to a few steps we have been doing for a while now:

1. When visiting family, we always book the same house at the same holiday park. Our son now knows it and is less anxious about being somewhere he doesn’t know.
2. We let our son use a part of the house to create his corner, his den, where he goes when he wants to relax and be alone.
3. My wife prepared a visual narrative of the holiday trip we showed before, during, and after.

We are planning an Italian summer trip and will face additional challenges. I will let you know how things will work out in early autumn!