Autism: Will it ever get easier?

Vic - 26 Mar 19

Our eldest son has autism and most days out can be pretty hard.  Why? You can’t predict autism; when will there be a trigger?

Is it going be too noisy?

Is it going to be too busy?

Is the food in the café just not, quite right?

Is the queue for ice creams going to blow his mind?

Is he going to wander in the direction of what’s on his mind?

Despite the autism minefield, we like to get out and about as much as possible.  Like most families with two kids (four and eight years old) too much device time gets the better of us (and that’s just the parents!).  However, I’ve lost count of the times when I’ve piled the kids in the car or crashed on the sofa thinking “That was a hard day out”. The cattle herding of kids, packing enough yellow based food , toilet stops, the “shit why didn’t we pack the frickin’ wellies” and no I don’t have a spare change of clothes, because getting out the house was hard enough in the first place.  So sometimes it’s about survival and getting home in one piece.  But deep down always thinking Will it ever get easier?

I am not for one-minute writing this for sympathy, but I truly understand the struggles of Hard Days Out and more than most truly appreciate the successes, even the small ones.  Autism can dominate, but you need to try new things, push through the treacle and take autism out of its comfort zone.  We all have our daily battles and frustrations, and  the mantra “it will get easier” it spoken across zillions of coffee shots nationwide .  I’ll be honest that isn’t always the case with a child with additional needs, it gets different, so facilitating a day out, you can come away thinking that was easier. It helps to be armed with as much information as humanly possible.

Don’t get me wrong some of our days out, are a success, they don’t always result in nakedness, tears and melt downs. But the days that I’m  carrying wet clothes, half eaten traces of banana wiped on my jeans and drinking cold coffee, are more frequent than good days.  Hey who doesn’t like eating a regurgitated oatcake off the floor of the Natural History Museum?

For us preparation, planning, organisation is our normal.  It’s exhausting; however, sometimes social media throws you a bone.  You see a post of a great place to take children with additional needs. In my wisdom, working as a secondary school teacher and juggling motherhood, I thought let’s set up a go-to website where you can find all this info, so harddaysout.com was born.  I truly want to help others to make the endurance day out easy. 

Do they have enclosed play areas? We love a “gated community”, it might be the only five minutes rest we get all day.

Do they sell cheese on toast? Don’t get me started about his obsession with cheese…he is funding British dairy farming nicely!

So, here’s hoping harrdaysout.com will help to make autism and additional needs a bit easier. It’s no magic bullet but hopefully whilst drinking that glass of G&T you make a sigh, easier rather than hard.

If you would like to find out more please visit us at Insta @hard_days_out  and www.harddayout.com  helping support .

[JD1]What does that mean?

Vic

I am a mother of two (eight and four years old), a secondary school teacher, exercise obsessed and creator of harddaysout.com. After eight years of raising our son with autism, I noticed that not every venue understands how they can help families like ours. I use to shy away from certain experiences and locations, as I knew it would lead to a very challenging day out for my son, myself and the rest of the family. I then realised that by excluding my son from these experiences meant I was limiting his opportunities and if I could prepare him, and the family prior to the visit things might be a lot easier. So, I began researching places to go that might be suitable which was time consuming. It was difficult to find the information on whether they had fast passes, carer passes, enclosed areas and soon realised a lot of venues were not always catering for the needs of both hidden and visible additional needs/disabilities in a transparent style. If I was struggling there must be hundreds of other families in the same position who needed help making these hard days out more easy. I fought hard to secure the right education for her son given the challenges his autism brings. As a result, I have a wealth of knowledge of the battles families face and I understand that family time definitely needs to be made easy.

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