Autism and Travel

Light It Up Blue for Autism April 2

Today is Light It Up Blue Day, Autism Speaks' autism awareness day. This is the 4th year that Autsim Speaks has run a campaign to honor people with autism and bring awareness about autism to others.  You may wonder what this has to do with travel.  I have sometimes found myself in the company of a family with a child on the autism spectrum.  I've learned a few things I can share about how to make that experience positive.  I've also learned that families with children on the spectrum can find successful travel experiences for their children!  Really, both things require a dose of what will probably work for any trip and any family...a little tolerance and patience on the part of us fellow travelers and the ability of families to plan a trip that meets the needs of their child, what ever their special needs and special abilities may be!

For travelers, understanding what autism is and how it affects children and their families goes a long way to being a tolerant fellow traveler!  The Autism Speaks website, here, is a good place to start.  Like most things, two people who have autism can be completely different and experience their autism in unique ways.

In my own experience I have occasionally seen a child "melt down" during a stressful travel experience (and I have no idea if the child was on the spectrum or not!).  My own response is to try to normalize this; avoid making negative comments or rolling eyes.  I assume that any child having a melt down might be suffering from a disorder that makes their emotional regulation more challenging or they may be just be having a bad day and deserve a little patience on my part!  I try to smile kindly, and look supportively towards the parents.  The moms and dads I know with special needs children always say that's helpful, because they are already challenged and trying their best to meet their child's needs under difficult circumstances.  Feeling a little support rather than scorn from fellow travelers really helps!

Occasionally, a child on the autism spectrum (or not) will be very curious and engage me in conversation or show interest in something I have with me while I'm on vacation.  I've had children who are excited and curious about their travel experience not understand that they might be interrupting someone's relaxing vacation with endless questions.  My own strategy is to patiently engage them for a little while (some of the kids ask great questions and I always enjoy meeting my fellow travelers of any age!) If the questions or attention starts to get too intrusive to me, I politely, kindly and clearly explain "I need some alone time right now, but I've enjoyed chatting with you".  This direct approach works well, and leaves the child feeling like they had a positive interaction with a fellow traveler.  

For families with a child on the Autism Spectrum or traveling with any children,  the best advice is to plan a trip designed to meet the needs of your child and family. This might mean working with a travel agency or taking a trip specifically designed for families with Children on the spectrum.  I will share Autism Speaks excellent web resource for travelers here  

Here are 3 tips that will work for any traveling child!

1. We always designed our itinerary around what our children could tolerate.  In Walt Disney World, this meant avoiding roller coasters that were scary to my children.  Hiking in Maine, we always chose a hike that could be easily handled by the youngest child.  Making these choices meant compromising, or not experiencing everything a destination may have to offer, but with each trip our kids developed more skills and competence and were left wanting to do more travel, not dreading the next forced march.
2. We always tried to include our children's interests in our trips. From an early age our girls expressed delight about animals and enjoyed watching them.  This led to us planning several "wildlife" trips with a mix of culture and history thrown in.  We all want our kids to have an "educational" experience, but exposing them to things that truly engage them is when they learn best. This is good advice for any family and especially for one with children with special needs! 
3. It's important to prepare children for travel.  Our girls dreamed of going on safari in Africa. We went to the zoo and practiced looking at the animals with our binoculars, we practiced sitting quietly for a long time waiting for animals to "do something".  This allowed our girls to progress to a much more adventurous and long trip to Botswana when they were teens. These practices not only prepared our kids for a what behavior might be expected on a safari, but it also allowed us to "test" whether our girls were really ready for such a big trip before we invested in it!  Preparation for a special needs child might include staying overnight in a hotel in your own town (you might get a local hotel to donate the night to you on a slow night if you let them know your plans) or dressing from clothes out of their suitcase for a few days.  Each parent usually knows best what sorts of things their own children might need to be prepared for. 

Learning how to use binoculars and a camera at the zoo prepared our children for a lifetime trip to Botswana

Some other special travel programs for children with autism

1. Because we love to cruise and have often cruised with Royal Caribbean, we have learned about a program called Autism on the Seas This program provides special cruises for families with children on the spectrum and also provides staff, accommodations and respite care on integrated cruises.  There are several lines involved now, including Disney and Carnival.  We've seen this program in action on cruises and I've talked to parents who said it was the only way they could ever have taken a cruise with their child (or in the case of one single mom I cruised with 2 children!) There is even financial assistance available.  I don't think there is anyone who needs a vacation more than the parents of a child with special needs!
2. I have also stumbled across a program at my airport where children with autism are invited to the airport with special staff to allow them to experience the security line, go onto a plane and see what the seats look like and "practice" sitting with their seat belts and taking off.  Many autism awareness groups run these kinds of events annually at their local airports. Click here for some airports that offer the program.
3. Another program I became aware of while at the Boston Opera House, was the occasional special productions for families with children with autism or other disruptive neurological disorders.  This allows children to respond, or leave if the show gets too overwhelming.  The lights generally stay on low, loud sounds moderated and actors often introduce themselves ahead of time to show their costumes if their character might be scary.  There is a list of upcoming local performances that "autism friendly" on the Autism Speaks Website here

 

To participate in Autism Speaks' Light It Up Blue campaign click here

Here is a sign you can download print and take a selfie with to raise awareness. Extra travel credit if you can identify all the global icon buildings and where they are located! 

Pashmina, Scarf or Linus's Blankie? The Always Useful Wrap!

Whatever you call it, pashmina, scarf, or my favorite, blankie, traveling with some kind of a wrap is extremely useful.  On long flights it serves as a blanket. Once at your destination it can do any number of jobs.  My own sister in law has used hers as a bug repellent in Botswana, a towel at the Schezechyi Baths in Budapest.  I have used mine as a blankie on a chilly flight and used a pareo in  French Polynesia as a table cloth and as a bathing suit cover up. (not at the same time!)

Patrick Tairua in Bora Bora rocks his pink pareo while taking tourists out on boat trips to the reef. You might recognize Patrick from his appearance on Amazing Race.

Nearly every culture uses large cloths for a variety of purposes, and as a traveling tribe, travelers can bring along a pareo, large scarf or wrap that can serve a multitude of purposes from the moment you leave home.

• as a blanket on the plane or in the worst cases, in the airport if you get stuck overnight
• as a wrap on cool nights
• to prevent sun or bug exposure in warm climates
• as a modesty cover in parts of the world or religious institutions where that is required
• as picnic blanket
• as a towel in areas where one is not supplied (baths or impromptu beach visits)
• as a bag/sack to carry laundry or groceries when doing errands while traveling

My sister and brother in law use their scarfs to keep them warm on the Rover and to keep the tiny flying midges off during a wild boat ride through the channels of the Okavango Delta in Botswana

Our pareo turned table cloth in Moorea for an impromptu beachside picnic during a bike ride.

Sometimes we don't bring a cloth, but prefer to buy one in our location.  Many counties have their own unique designs and they make excellent souvenirs!   Whether its colorful silks from the far east, a South African graphic print, a cotton pareo from South Polynesia or batik from St Kitts, all of these fabrics become colorful, practical reminders of each trip!

Have I missed some uses?  I'd love to hear about your experiences with travel wraps!

Just Thinking Outloud: Public Transportation

With record snowfall in Boston, we expect to have public transit bail us out when driving and parking in the city gets challenging, but the MBTA's performance got me thinking about other transit systems around the world and why some of them do it better.

We've recently had record snowfall in Boston, over 8 feet have fallen in January and February. It appears we've absconded with all of the snow meant for Alaska and the Northwest this winter. And our public transit system has ground to a halt at times. 

Sure record snowfall creates sown unique challenges for any public transit system, but Switzerland gets snow and yet their public transit system runs like a fine Swiss watch (that is a hackneyed cliche, and yet, somehow, it works there)  I do not pretend to know the first thing about public transportation systems, but this got me thinking about all the places I've been, and wondering why some in places the public transit works beautifully, while in others, it works so poorly? 

In greater Boston, people love to complain about the MBTA (Mass Bay Transit Authority). They complain about rude behavior on the trains, the condition of the stations and the trains, as well as the schedules and on time performance.  And I have experienced all of these things using the MBTA. But my experience in other places is often quite different. 

The MBTA recently ran an ad campaign to encourage less boorish behavior of passengers. While traveling in Paris once when I was 6 months pregnant during the busy commuter times, not only was a seat made available on the Metro when I boarded, but the sea of humanity literally parted, and I was passed along hand to hand by the other mothers to it.  The only thing missing was the heavenly choir sound and down light shining on the seat.  I had never been treated so respectfully, pregnant or otherwise since.  

In Boston trains and stations are not particularly well maintained or clean, and I always attributed this to the fact the our system is one of the oldest in the world. But then I spent a weekend riding a system built 5 years earlier than the MBTA - in Budapest. The Budapest Metro was scrupulously clean, efficient, easy to use, even in a country where the language is notoriously hard to master. 

The Budapest Metro was built in 1896, more than 125 years later, it's still beautifully maintained, clean and easy to use.

We took a trip to Washington DC with 2 small children, and were able to safely and easily hop off the plane with our roller bags, and surface at our hotel a 1/2 hour later. I wouldn't dare try to take the train to Logan airport from my own neighborhood, where the local newspaper recently named the line closest to my home the worst performer in the system. I'd be panicked I'd miss the flight!

After growing up in Boston where the stations are hard to find and navigate, it was a big surprise to arrive in our nations's capital and get around so easily on the Washington Metro.

Maybe the system in each place takes on the character of its location; in Paris the Metro is elegantly designed,  in Budapest it's clean and efficient, in Washington DC, a city filled with International guests and ambassadors, it's simple to use. Maybe in Boston our transit system has taken on the characteristics of Bostonians, we love to have something to complain about! For a long time, the Red Sox filled that need, (and still do every other year it seems) and the weather often does (especially this year!) so maybe we need a creaky, outdated, inefficient transit system to give us something to complain about!  
 

Boston has recently thrown its hat into the ring as a contender for the 2024 Olympics and the transit system is one of the areas that would have to improve. Many Bostonians are skeptical about running a a successful Olympics here and if you dig, even a little, it turns out most of the concern is about traffic and public transit woes. This winter only reinforced that! 
 

A ride on the Green Line in Boston.

So with all the recent news about our transit woes in Boston I've been thinking hard about what makes some public transit systems great and why some fail to meet standards. And I've concluded (without any actual research, mind you) that public transit generally works well in places where everyone, from all walks of life, uses it. Maybe as the system gets worse, people of means decide to drive their own cars and pay for parking, and without those folks using the system, the public transit systems become the domain of the poorest, most powerless  people in a community, and they have no voice to make it better. As they say the "squeaky wheel get the grease" and clearly if you've ridden the MBTA, you know they have lots of real squeaky wheels, (it's ear splitting at times standing near the tracks!) but maybe not enough people invested in agitating about better service and proper investment. When people from every walk of life use a public transit system there are stake holders in every corner, some very powerful people, and they make their voices heard, so that pressure helps direct attention to the system and demands it be more efficient.  

Understandably, it's much easier to make an efficient national public transit system in a country the size of Hungary than a country the size of the US, but the city systems are pretty equitably sized and populated.  Also, I will grant that some totalitarian regimes have an advantage of unilaterally deciding where to invest resources, but it seems that most places where the trains run on time, everyone uses them, and where they don't, they are largely utilized by the people with few other choices. I can't even say which comes first, the system is poorly run, so people flee it, or it's inefficient so only people who have no choice, use it, it's probably some combination of both. All I know for sure is that I notice when traveling to other places where I can easily use the transit system, even as a guest who doesn't speak the language,  I find myself marveling "wow, I wish we had something like this in Boston!"