Traveling with autism: one strategy

Brian Field

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A few years ago our family of four made its annual pilgrimage across country from Connecticut to San Francisco to visit family for Christmas. Our boys at that point were 2 and a half and 4; our younger son had been diagnosed with autism earlier that year. What previously had been the “somewhat stressful” coast-to-coast flight that year transformed into a nightmare.

Running through the terminal the moment we took him out of his stroller, screaming. Screaming and tantrums once inside of the plane – for what is a good 6 hour flight -- the irritated looks of the other travelers “What the hell is wrong with that kid!?” that years earlier I might have thought as well, traveling alone across country. A hellish battle. When we arrived in San Francisco, the only thing on our minds was “My God; we’re going to have to endure that horror again in a mere few days flying back.” And we did. It was enough to give up even trying to travel any distance more than an hour’s car drive.

Over the course of that year, and the hundreds of hours of therapy that our son undertook – a good number of those hours spent with either my wife or me too – we were fast approaching our next potential travel date. Not as far as across country, but several hours by plane nonetheless. Neither of us were looking forward to the travel. We then thought to take a page from his therapy.

Still weeks away from the voyage, we began to script what would happen on the trip. “We are going to get into a car and go to the airport; there are lots of planes there to see. There will many people there rushing around, you will hold our hands and will be safe” and so on. We repeated this every day, sometimes several times a day - and always right before bedtime. Obviously, we couldn’t account for every detail, but we did continue to add more information into the “daily travel script” as it became known.

When the big day arrived, we anxiously braced ourselves – not sure if our prep-work would keep him calm. Well, it sure did! Not only was he calm during the flight, he was excited (in a good way) as he knew pretty much what would happen in each leg of the trip.

We do this prepping now, days and weeks in advance with as much detail as we can muster, whenever we are going to undertake something that will take several hours time to “experience” – and we look upon even the more mundane pieces now as experiences to be relished (as we build the script, we too take additional enjoyment in each step of that, making the plain something to be examined and enjoyed).