Disability expert Lisa Simmons shares empowering advice with families whose travel needs are extra special.
Most parents will tell you that successful family traveling takes planning. Traveling with a special needs child takes even more preparation, but is sure to create wonderful families memories for everyone. Here are some tips to help make your adventure a true success.
1. Be Brave!
Many families with special needs kids are just plain scared of trips away from home. The thought of trying to do sensitive medical procedures “on the road” or deal with behavioral outbursts in front of a family crowd is simply too overwhelming to contemplate. Unless your doctor or specialist has specifically ruled out travel, don’t let your fears take over! Everyone needs to get away once in awhile and a little planning and preparation can put many of your fears to rest.
2. Planning is Everything!
Map out your trip and select destinations and rest stops that can accommodate your child’s needs. If you are planning a trip by car this will mean checking accessibility at your final destination as well as any places you’ll be stopping or staying en route.
In addition to getting in the door safely, you’ll also want to consider what items you’ll need for bedtime, bathtime and mealtimes. By calling ahead you can bring along anything that your destinations don’t have. If any seem totally unable to meet your needs, don’t be shy about asking for other recommendations in the area. Maybe the knowledge that they lost a potential customer will inspire them to improve their accessibility.
3. Consult with Your Child’s Physician.
Ask for recommendations, tips, and a special “travel pack” with items you may need in case of an emergency. Your travel pack might include:
- A list of any prescription drugs your child is taking and a copy of each prescription.
- A physician’s description letter of your child’s condition and needs in case of an emergency.
- Phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and/or pager numbers of your home physicians/specialists.
- Recommendations for physicians and specialists in the area you’re visiting.
- Health insurance cards and phone numbers (be sure you’ve reviewed your insurance policy before you leave because many require prior approval before out of town emergency room or doctor’s visits).
- Phone numbers of any necessary medical supply company.
4. Pack Extras.
Bring more than you need of the special items your child requires. Remember: “Better safe than sorry.” Well it goes double when you’re traveling. Don’t set yourself up for problems by running out of a critical item. Plus, with a few extras on hand, you won’t be rattled when a well-meaning family member accidentally drops or spills precious medicine!
5. Keep Track of Personal Essentials.
If your special needs child has favorite toys, security items or essential medical items, you don’t want to discover them missing halfway home. As you pack, make a checklist of all essential items and double check it before you leave each stop of your journey.
6. Find Transportation to Meet Specific Needs.
If your goal is to make your trip as stress-free as possible, this can be a critical choice. Is your destination close enough to travel by car? Would air or train travel put you too far from emergency medical personnel for an extended period? If your child requires specialized seating support, what type of travel works best with their seating system? If you’re working with a travel agent, be sure to ask about special guidelines or requirement for passengers with disabilities.
An excellent source of detailed information about the logistics of planning accessible travel by plane, train, bus and ship is “Barrier-Free Travel: A Nuts and Bolts Guide for Wheelers and Slow Walkers” by Candy Harrington.
7. Don’t Be Shy.
During your travels you’re bound to run into individuals who don’t know what to do or how to react to an individual with special needs. As diplomatically as you can, let people know what you need and expect them to make accommodations for your child’s special needs. Most people will be more than happy to help. If they offer you a room or seating accommodation that just won’t work, politely decline and explain again what you need and why. Look at this as an opportunity to do your part for disability awareness!
8. Remember: It’s a “Family” Trip.
If it’s your first trip away from home, you will naturally be concerned about how your special needs child is getting along, but don’t forget your other family members! Be sure you offer some quality time and attention to your other kids as well. While your special needs child is napping or occupied with a favorite toy, chat with other kids and reconnect. They will thank you by having a much more cooperative and supportive attitude when your attention has to be focused on your special needs child.
9. Plan a Day of Rest.
Even the most experienced travelers experience jet lag and it’s not just confined to air travel! Expect both your kids’ and your own body to need some down time when you arrive at your destination, and again, when you arrive home. Allow a day for rest and recovery before you dive back into your hectic routine.
10. Don’t Expect Perfection.
Traveling, like everything else, is an acquired skill. If your first trip doesn’t turn out perfectly, don’t give up! Sit down and analyze what went wrong. How could you have prepared differently or more effectively? Which of your destinations and stopovers worked well? Which ones just need to be crossed off your list?
Chances are, if your holiday trip was to visit family, you’ll be traveling that road again. Time spent establishing relationships can be time well invested!
Just remember, every trip is a learning experience for you and a precious family memory for your children, whatever their needs! Safe travels!
Lisa Simmons is a disability researcher and author of “The Internet Resource Guide for Parents and Disability Professionals”. Visit her online at Oklahoma Parents Center and learn more about the resources she provides to parents.
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I poured my heart and soul into this!!! Hope you people enjoy! =)
Wow, this is wonderful! You are so lucky to have gotten this opportunity. You looked absolutely gorgeous at the show and the red carpet. Thanks for sharing this, it really made me smile. I used to have the biggest crush on Joe Jonas.. hahah!
Amazing trip!
I hope that my story will inspire and enrich your lives; even if it doesn’t touch you as much as it has touched me. I hope that this will be passed on and that people will take a few minutes just to read what I had to say and try to be in the mind of these children. Try to change your day and see your house, your possessions, your income, and those many great things that you possess and find a way to share them with others. We all need a wakeup call sometimes, a message to straighten us out and look at the life we were given. I hope to go back next year to repeat the experience all over again and try to change myself even more, I love those children and I love their compassion and selflessness. Words can’t fully express what I felt or what I witnessed but my words are clear, these people see the world much differently than us, they treat possessions differently and they know how to work as a community.
This is about when my family and I took a trip down to Central Florida for our Family Vacation.
Hope you enjoy!
This was a vacation that taught me a lot about how my religion is organzied and gave me more appreciation for it.
I will never forget the time I spent in Germany.
I hope you guys enjoyed my story!
Best luck.
South Africa is this amazing country that not only is beautiful for its animals and scenery but for its people and for its ability to overcome the greatest oppression: apartheid, the discrimination of the majority. I am so glad I was given the gift of traveling to South Africa. It is an experience I will never forget!
It was a great trip!
I hope everyone who takes the time to read The Awakening enjoys learning about my bus ride to reality.
My typed essay about my vacation in Vietnam. It seem poorly written or should I say typed :\
Bryan Gray Europe Tour.
My vacation to Panama became suprisingly meaningful, contrary to what I had initially expected.
Thank you
This was a fun and yet difficult project i truely have enjoyed sharing my vaction with you.
Mahalo,
Have you ever been to Maine? What did you like best?
This is such an amazing story and essay!!
Their were many more memories from this trip that impacted me as much as the ones that were included, but I just didnt have enough room. So, I shortened it and tried to write the best description of the trip without exceeding the word limit. But the trip was, indeed, as remarkable as I said it was.
Washington is a really nice place. It has many museums and historical places. it also has very delicious foods. Chinatown was my favorite place to eat.
Thank you for this scholarship opportunity!
IB York was a great experience, and a great opportunity to explore new ideas and innovations
So now I head to college without my classmates but i will always have this wonderful experience.
🙂
This is one of my many travel adventure stories from my trip to Europe in the beginning of the summer. Besides Prague, I traveled to Berlin, Munuch, and Nuremberg in Germany, Innsbruck in Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and France. My favorite place was Switzerland, but my favorite story was the one I shared. I hope you enoy reading it as much as i enjoyed experiencing it!
I want everyone to be able to expericence something like I did.:) Everyone desevers happines!
I hope you enjoyed my travel blog and I hope you plan to take your mom to the Peaks of Otter Lodge for the best brunch you will ever eat. For more information click on this link:
http://www.peaksofotter.com/
Finished product. I love PERU!
This eye-opening opportunity has shaped my conviction toward making change and developing the community. It is a great pleasure to meet all those Leadership Award Honorees and other49 ANNpower fellows from 24 states in the U.S. I will continue to make change and build a dynamic community, excursively to ethnic, social, political gender aspects of advantage, as my milestone to become a great leader!
This eye-opening opportunity marks the culmination of my junior year. I am so glad to meet all those wonderful women leaders from all around the world and 49 other ANNpower fellows from other 24 states. I will continue to explore the world and make change with eagerness and confident, and overcoming disadvantage exclusively toward the milestone of a great leader!
I hope everyone enjoys my trip to Catalina and Ensenada!
This trip was the best trip regarding family time. It is unforgettable.
To see more photography from the trip, check out my photojournal: http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Photojournal-of-My-Grecian-Travels/213497035367351.
What a testimony!! Thanks for posting. You don't know how impactful this is. Let Jesus keep using you for His glory. 😉
I was saved in August of 2009. I was in my parents's room and we all prayed for m, becuase I was tired of not having a desire for God. There I gave my life to Him and let Him be my Lord. I already excepted Him as Savior, but though it was a license to sin. Thatt day, though I wanted to repent of my sin and let God lead me. Lord and Savior go hand-in-hand. My life is changed. Now I have convictions and am learning so much about seeking God, because He is seeking me. It's awesome to live in the security and hope of knowing I will see Him one day in heaven. I am so glad He lives in me, because my goodness outside of Him is nothing. I don't know what I would do without Him.
Jesus used that park to bring you and your dad back together. How beautiful 🙂
Each place I go, I leave a peice of myself. And everyplace I go leaves a peice of itself in me. The people I have met along the way have changed me in the deepest way. Their lives have touched mine and I can never return to life as was usual. Likewise, my life has touched many along the way. It is my hope that nobody I meet along the way may return to life as was their usual. This is how each thead pulls coth and fabric together as we the people of the world cover it like a quilt. We must double stitch each peice so not to fall apart or leave holes. We need one another.
To whoever reading this, I am the person wearing blue shirt and white shorts, sligtly leaning on the panda bear statue.
My essay that talks about my experience traveling to Lima, Peru aims toward encouraging others who are not too familiar with it to visit and appreciate the fun life changing experience they're gauranteed to get.
What a great contest! Hope to see lots of terrific teen travel stories here!
It was difficult for me to type a 600 word blog about an amazing experience I had in the month of July. It was also difficult for me to choose certain pictures from the ones that I have chosen, so I uploaded the pictures of my time at NeiHu elementary school. I really wished that I could have used more sightseeing photos, but unfortunately, those were too big to upload.
This trip was amazing and it also tested who I am becoming as a person. Seeing the woman in Central Park living out her dream, to the woman selling fruit throughout the day; New York is made of dreamers and hardworking people. I loved it. Hope I get the chance to go back.
This was an amazing experience! I am so grateful for everything it taught me!!
From research, I believe the ice cream shop was called Eisdiele Eddy. More information about the exchange program can be found at http://www.aatg.org/study-trip-faq as well as at the bottom of the page at http://www.aatg.org/NGE-awards.
These Picutures are both of my own creation (one being an acrylic painting). When I took this picture at the western wall in Israel, the man in the photo was crying his heart out wearing a tattered down bath robe, I thought it would make for an intersting picture. So it did, it also inspired to me to create a painting in which I showed the world what I believe he really is. A man who is down on his luck but seems to still find peace in his life.
My sophomore year of high school I went to Donner Pass in California with a group called The Woods Project (www.thewoodsproject.org) . I had to apply to go , I was really anxious and scared that I wasn’t going to get. When I got my acceptance letter I was excited. I was also nervous because I had never been away from home for more than a week and The Woods project was going to last for two weeks. I had chosen to go to Donner Pass because I wanted to experience something new. I was going to go backpacking for one week and hiking the other. I had never gone backpacking before. When I told my friends that I was going backpacking they started to laugh because I am the smallest girl in my whole school and they didn’t think I was going to make it. Getting that response from my friends made me super scared of going to the trip. I thought I was going to die while backpacking!
My dad went to go drop me off at the airport and then he left. I was already scared and freaking out at the fact that he had just left me there and I did not know anybody! . I got in the plane to California and I was already regretting going on the trip. I was going to be with complete strangers for two weeks! When we got to California we all got split .There were three groups going to different places, one to Yosemite, another to Marine Headlines and then mine, to Donner Pass. I got in a van and that’s where I met the people who I was going to spend two weeks with. We were in that van for hours! When we finally got to our cabin we had to go up a hill to get to the door.
The first cabin we stayed in was named Clair Tappan Lodge. It was really nice . It was made out of wood, had a pool table, personal chef, jacuzzi and hot water in the showers. I loved it there! Too bad it only lasted for two days then it was time to go backpacking. They gave us our backpacking materials. I tried on the backpack and almost fell over. My backpacking week had started. We went up and down mountains, through rivers and lakes, and I thought we were never going to set up our tents. When it started to get dark we finally started cooking. The food we had was not good at all. We couldn’t bring a lot of food because of the bears and other animals. My second day of backpacking went better than the first. Everybody in my group started to know each other better and soon we became really close. We would sing while backpacking to make time pass faster and at night we didn’t want to sleep because we would play games. While backpacking I got to experience many things I hadn’t before. Even though I was the smallest girl going backpacking I was always the leader of the line because of my stamina.
When our backpacking week ended it was time to hike. I had gotten the hardest part of the trip over with so I knew hiking was going to be a piece of cake. We would hike in the morning and hanged out at night. It was the best experience I had ever had! When it was time to go back home I didn’t want to because I knew I would miss my friends.
To watch my video go to : http://youtu.be/FLd7W71EnyU
My experience as a first time camper.
i hope i win