Away for the weekend.....leaving autism at home.

There are things about autism that I love. These things include innocence - DS is not into superheroes or bad guys, he is more than happy playing with his spinning toys, watching bubbles and listening to nursery rhymes. Also the way DS is not self -conscious - he doesn't give a hoot what anything thinks of him therefore other peoples opinion does not restrict him in anyway, if he wants to dance around the room making a 'odd' noise then he will if he is alone or if there is 10 people there! The way he sees things from a different angle - I often seeing him looking at things really close such as a running tap mesmerised by the changing patterns and glimmer of colour. We have often sat there watching it together, something I haven't noticed before until he showed me.

Then there are things about autism that I don't particularly favour :( DS watching children playing and wanting to join in but doesn't know how to, the way autism limits his speech which makes him frustrated and angry, how it makes his hearing too sensitive so noise is unbearable, how it makes him unaware of danger, how it restricts his walking/fine motor skills/understanding.
Its this groups that makes days out as well as daily life challenging, so with this in mind we decided to have a little weekend away to see the........

Ta..da! The Coca-Cola truck!

When I heard that the Christmas Coca-Cola was coming to my area I knew we had to see it. I hoped DS would like it too with it being all lit up and would give him some nice sensory feedback. To make a bit of a weekend of it, we booked a room for the night as DS just so loves staying away.

As always, I started to prepare DS the day before about what we were going to do. As it was a school day for everyone else, we decided to take full advantage of places being quiet for DS such as going swimming at a local fun swimming centre, then see the big red truck then to the room (as we calls it)

I showed DS a picture of each of these from the relevant websites as a visual. He took it all in and then proceeded to dance and do his happy jumping around the room :)

DS was a absolute superstar! He tolerated so much, so well! I always watch him intently so I can spot any cues that he needs to get out or escape, the first clue came after about 70 mins into swimming that that the noise was getting too much. I thought he did amazingly well to last that long so we started to prepare him that swimming was nearly coming to a end.

Over the weekend, he coped with:

• The echo and general noise of swimming
• The drive from swimming to the hotel
• Checking into the hotel and getting to our room to realise that they only had a shower and not a bath as well as the drive to the transferred hotel (one with a bath)
• Sitting in stand still traffic
• Checking into a second hotel
• Seeing the Coca-Cola truck in freezing weather
• Sitting in a busy restaurant whilst having tea
• Eating breakfast whilst sat beautifully in a strange place with strange plates, forks, spoons etc than that at home.
• The drive home

Wow! wow! wow! I'm still in shock at all this. This is the second trip away that has been fabulous with no meltdown in sight.
Of course DS will have 'wobbles' and anxiety attacks which I'm finding with early intervention from me I tend to be able to bring him back to being calm - I've just to catch it early enough!

A magical and precious time with DS and autism seemed so far far away....

Have a good weekend xx