By Emma Lynch
I like traveling. But traveling with my wonderful and neurodiverse family can be frustrating.
When we travel, everyone has different mindsets and different opinions, so we can wind up arguing, about anything. Food, beds, hotels, sightseeing,
It can be hard to get everyone up and going. I like to be up at the crack of dawn so I’m not late for anything and I can do more activities. My brothers are the opposite. If they could, they would just sleep and do nothing else.
They’re tired a lot, but traveling can also make you tired – there are different types of tired. The first one is sleepy tired. The second is angry tired. The third is homesick tired. The last is we’re-getting-absolutely-nowhere tired. They’re kind of like the five stages of grief.
You go through different stages of tiredness. If someone says I’m tired, you can usually tell by their tone of voice which will reflect on which type. But sometimes its tricky. You can be more than one type of tired. That’s why you have to look for signs. How are they acting? What is their facial expression? What pose are they in? what emotion are they feeling? These can all lead to the answer. These will help you not start arguments.
I try to accommodate to everyone. Then you can also try and find stuff to agree on. What foods does everyone like? What restaurant does everyone want to go to? Is this a day to dress up and go to a fancy restaurant, or a day to just get fast food? If you know that it’s not the day to go to a fancy restaurant with perfect manners, don’t bother.
Find topics everyone likes and talk about that. Sure, you might like sports or art, but does everyone else? Try and find interesting topics that everyone can build onto to start long conversations. It could be literally anything.
The next time you go to a restaurant and might argue, play a game I like to call “CS “. It stands for conversation starters. One person starts by mentioning something and you go around in a circle. Everyone adding on a little bit until you can stop playing and keep the conversation going. That is the first way you can successfully travel happily with a neurodiverse family.