Taking your Kid with Autism to India

                                guest post by Donna Ciccia [caption id="attachment_12334" align="aligncenter" width="640"] photo credit Donna Ciccia[/caption] ‘Hi All, I’m Donna from Australia.I’m a homeopath, nutritionist, and mum to a six-year-old boy with High Functioning Autism. Our son Luca (our only child) has some wonderfully quirky traits that I would never change and some behaviors that we work hard on. My philosophy on educating Luca is that everything is an incredible learning opportunity, whether it be a good, bad or a difficult situation.My goal, like most parents, is to have an adjusted, independent and happy child. He started mainstream school this year, has transitioned well and loves it. We have recently traveled to India, New Delhi and had a fabulous time, our first overseas trip as a family. We prepared him by eating Indian food most weekends and watching a documentary movie on India.His teacher was incredibly helpful by bringing in her photos of traveling to India and talking about it in class. In the early planning stages, we thought of two things to ensure a successful trip.The first one was that we invited my parents (grandparents) to join us as we knew it would allow us (parents) to have much needed down time.The second was we kept our trip short (only eight days) since we viewed it as a preparation for a much longer trip planned for Christmas time. Our son handled all the transitions extremely well and was treated like a superstar in India as they don’t see many western white children.He got used to getting asked to be photographed and only declined (politely) if he was having a difficult time. To help Lucca with his travel stresses, we packed his favorite foods, a few favorite toys and the i-Pad which we only had to bring out on long trips and at lunch times. We raided the hotel buffet every morning for croissants & strawberry jam (remember to pack zip-lock bags) that helped us with providing our son with fresh snacks for all our day trips.He ended up having a marvelous time. We have not even been back a week, and he is planning his next trip. We couldn’t have asked for a better result!’ A brief footnote. While staying in New Delhi, India, we stayed at the  Le Meridien Hotel,  a five-star property where the front desk graciously upgraded us to a wonderful two-bedroom suite. The staff was incredible in accommodating us and catering to our needs.We got to take several day trips to tour the city and all its landmarks. Our longest day trip turned out to be to the incredible town of Agra to explore the famous Taj Mahal; a 5.5-hour car trip each way! My travel tip for parents wit autism would be to book a hotel and stay near the Taj Mahal overnight instead of going back and forth in one day (like we did) since that turned out pretty exhausting for everyone. However, it was still well worth the long drive! The trip was pure magic!]]>

Margalit Sturm Francus

A reformed dentist who gave up pulling teeth to show her son the world! Need tips on how to #travel with #autism? Follow me on Instagram & Facebook