Holidays can be the most joyous times, yet the most stressful!
Holidays give us the chance to spend quality time with our children without rushing out the door in time for school. We are able to reenergise from the busy school term, but this luxury is only available for non working parents or those parents who chose to take time off or take annual leave.
I am lucky being a teacher, I work school terms and any work that is needed to be done during the holidays is on my terms. I choose when, where and how long I spend working and always made sure it fit in with our holiday plans.
Holidays can also cause so much stress to parents. Do they use annual leave? Book holiday care? There is added financial stress keeping kids busy and costs associated with different outings, not to mention also managing kids play dates and keeping them busy and off devices 24/7.
Managing holidays with an Autistic child added an extra element of stress. I use to plan catch ups with other kids, over planning so he had the opportunity to be social. (Just a side note my daughter was always good at planning things herself,) play dates were always so complex…where, how long, who with?
Who we invited was carefully orchestrated, kind kids was crucial, kids who my son felt comfortable with and socialised with at school, however we needed to keep the number small and intimate as this was always best for my son to be his best social self and not have to read too many different social cues from others all at once.
I always tried to keep plays short, 2-3 hours at most. As my son got older he was more capable of having longer catch ups, and even sleepovers (although I didn’t sleep while he was out always waiting for that phone call). Masking and reading social cues, sensory input and stimulus being increased in different environments always meant that my son was being pushed to his coping and social limits. This is extremely exhausting for Autistic people and for my son with Autism, it was pretty much a 50/50 balance. If we were out for 3 hours, he would need 3 hours to calm, regulate and revitalise.
The location was always so important - a play centre is always so busy and not really conducive to socialising, I would often find there was so much stimulation that my son would play solo. I use to like having play dates at home as it was a familiar and comfortable environment. This, however would cause problems when parents use to come along as well. Parents would be comfortable - their kids entertained, their house not being messed up, they are relaxed chatting and sipping on coffee. This led to the play date being extra long and of course my son would then reach his social limits and would start getting agitated, other families would not pick up on this and them…BAM = meltdown! I quickly learnt external environments (such as an outdoor playground) were best as I was then in total control of when we left and could avoid the play ending in a meltdown and everyone leaving happy with their cups full.
I use to find all of this so stressful and I would end up being so heightened and stressed out, I was a mess by the time term started again and I never got time to reenergise. I then figured out that going away for holidays in our caravan (a safe, familiar environment) would save all of this stress but also had extra benefits.
Even though we would go to different locations, we had our safe haven in our caravan with our personal belongings and luxuries. We were bushing boundaries and getting our son out of his comfort zone being in and exploring different locations and having different experiences, yet he was able to recoup in his safe place (our caravan). We also managed how much we did and made sure we had ‘chill days’ where we did absolutely nothing - quite often on these days our son wouldn’t leave the van for more than an hour or two, and that was absolutely ok, as we knew that’s what he needed. We also then made sure he knew that there was no choice but to participate on the active days. This was our trade off and our way of pushing him out of his comfort zone to learn more about how to manage feelings, emotions and the business of life.
There were so many positives to being away. Fun quality family time, socialising and learning social skills (we often travel with other families & there were always other kids in the caravan park to meet, some now lifelong friend), being out of our comfort zones and learning coping strategies in different environments, learning how to manage emotions and how to regulate in different spaces, the so many experiences we have had along the way, time to relax and reenergise. We have been camping for 14 years and some experiences have included swimming with whale sharks, seeing whales from our campsite, trekking beautiful gorges and remote beaches. For me I didn’t need to stress about play dates and I could actually relax with no house work - what’s not to love!
