For many of us, summer is almost here. This means school will be out and you may be beginning to plan your summer vacations. I know how challenging vacations can be for parents who have a child with ADHD or other special needs. It can be a struggle to try to make everyone in your family happy and also take into account your child’s unique needs. I am going to share some of my hard earned experience with you about how to make your vacation with your ADHD child less stressful and more fun for all.
A Tale of Two Vacations
One spring my family and I decided to make a trip to Walt Disney World. We opted to go during spring break when the kids were out of school. We made reservations at a hotel on the premises. It was a bit of the spur of the moment thing, with not too much planning ahead of time. We did make reservations for dining, however, including breakfasts with the Disney characters. My son Max was extremely excited by the thought of Walt Disney World and was getting very hyped up before our trip. We did not prepare him very much for the big event as we were so busy getting things ready for our vacation.
Can I tell you that this particular trip was one of the most memorable vacations we have ever had as a family? But not for the reasons you might think. It was forever engraved in our memory because it was the vacation from hell.
Know that my whole family loves Walt Disney World. The service is wonderful. There are more than enough fun activities for any child. Unfortuantely, our lack of adequate planning for Max took a huge toll. Here are some of our mistakes:
1. We went on our Disney vacation during one of the most crowded times of year. There was a sea of people everywhere we went and lines were unbelievable.
2. Our hotel room, although fun and festive, was too small for our family. And Max, who needs space to unwind and relax could not relax in such a room.
3. We centered much of our time on getting to reservations for dining with the Disney characters. Guess who ended up being frightened out of his gourd to eat with the characters? As we were waiting in line for our table for breakfast at the Polynesian Hotel, Max got to see the characters banging drums and marching around the tables and he ran down the hall to get away from all the commotion. We had no clue that he would react like this. We ended up ditching all our dining plans.
4. We tried to do as much as we could in one day and because of that we didn’t allow for much of a break in between activities. By early evening Max would begin to have meltdowns.
5. Max didn’t know what to expect each day because we would just decide that morning where we might go, but never gave him a rundown of choices for activities.
The experience was simply too overwhelming for Max. He became too anxious and wired to truly enjoy the trip. He wasn’t sleeping well and was cranky and irritable for most of our vacation. We ended up leaving a day early as nobody was enjoying anything due to Max’s escalation of meltdowns and hyperactivity.
