Autism and Travel: Tips for Stress-Free Family Trips

Family trips are often a great way to build life-long bonds and memories that you won’t soon forget. Travel helps everyone in the family relax, relieve stress, experience new things and places, open their mind to other cultures and be more accepting of other people.

Travel is good for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), too, but it may not be as simple and stress-free. The idea of going on vacation alone might be stressful if you have a child with autism.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t travel or shouldn’t at least try. Instead, it might just take some extra planning and trips that keep your child’s strengths, challenges and needs in mind.

Here are some tips for stress-free family trips if you have a child on the autism spectrum.

Table Of Contents

Create a Plan

Planning is important when taking a family vacation, but it takes on a different meaning if you have a child with autism. Preparation and planning in this regard means searching for destinations and places to stay that would be a good fit for your child.

Search for hotels that may be able to accommodate any special needs that your family will need. Communicate to them what your needs are — and do the same for any transportation services you will use or places you plan to visit.

Make sure that you are packing items that bring your child comfort, including their favorite toys, stuffed animals, snacks and anything that helps them cope with new environments and routines.

Communicate the Plan

It’s very important to also prepare your family for the trip ahead. Children with ASD often thrive on familiarity and routines, but family trips are big changes in both of these things.

You can prepare your child with autism for what’s ahead by communicating with them clearly and often about what the plan will be. Help them understand what they might encounter, focusing on some of the exciting things they will do on the trip.

You should also consistently remind them of what’s coming next — while you’re taking the trip and while you’re on the trip. This will help them feel more comfortable with the foreign things they are about to experience.

Be Flexible and Rest

It’s best to be as flexible as you can with your family vacation if you’re traveling with a child on the autism spectrum. Try not to get locked in to specific activities at specific times.

Instead, have multiple options for things you can do on a particular day, and choose the one that works best for your family that day. Your child may feel overwhelmed or anxious on one day, which could cause a disruption in plans.

If you’re flexible and open to changes on the fly, you and your family can have an amazing time — even if the original plan doesn’t work out.

It’s equally as important to provide your child with some downtime. Don’t pack your schedule with too many activities, as that can cause children with autism to get overwhelmed easily.

By balancing out activities and new adventures with relaxing downtime, you’ll be allowing your child to take a break and reset.

Maintain a Routine

At the same time, it’s important to establish a routine and stick to it as much as you can while you’re traveling. Some of the things your child will experience on family trips will be significantly different from what they experience on a daily basis.

That being said, you can still provide certainty to their days by creating a routine and maintaining that structure. This could include eating your meals at the same time every day, establishing daily routines such as bathtime and reading before bed, and doing certain activities at certain times every day.

By providing this predictability, you’ll be setting your child with autism up for success, which can help to make your entire family trip as stress free as possible for everyone.

Follow the Positive Reinforcement Principles of ABA Therapy

Applied behavior analysis (ABA therapy) provides a great blueprint for how you can help support your child with autism for stress-free family trips. Positive reinforcement is a core concept of ABA therapy, and it’s something you can do during your trip to motivate your child to follow directions and exhibit positive behaviors.

For instance, if your child gets dressed correctly in the morning, you can reward them by giving them extra praise or time with a toy they love. You can do the same thing throughout your day.

Being consistent with the positive reinforcement is key to success in this regard. By following this principle of ABA therapy, you can motivate your child to remain engaged and to exhibit behaviors that are appropriate for the situation.

In this way, you’ll be putting everyone in the best position possible to have an amazing family trip.

Blue Gems ABA Teaches Children with ASD How to Modify Behaviors

Family trips can be stressful if you have a child with autism. If you plan ahead and follow some of the tips we’ve laid out above, though, you can remove the stress and create a situation where everyone has an amazing time and makes memories that last a lifetime.

At Blue Gems ABA, we support children on the autism spectrum by teaching them new skills and helping them modify certain negative and/or harmful behaviors. We do this by administering ABA therapy on a one-to-one basis.

All of the treatment plans we created are crafted specifically for each individual child, helping them gain the social, communication and daily life skills with which they typically struggle.

To learn more, please contact us today.