On traveling as a neurodivergent parent.
Managing poor sleep, overexcited kids, people pleasing, parents, and long drives.
In May, my family and I drove sixteen hours to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.
Unfortunately, this was a giant case of people-pleasing and something that was, in my and Meggan’s minds, a huge ask. But it’s also one that was going to be a very memorable experience for the people we were trying to please—my parents and our kids. It went much better than we thought it would, and while it was a hard drive, three of the four days we spent in Hilton Head went well and were memorable.
Ahead of time, I asked Charlie Rewilding’s Community Thread about how they travel with young kids and family and do not get a break. The hardest part for me was probably not going a single waking hour that I wasn’t talking to someone for nine straight days. And I was dealing with kids waking up in the middle of the night and very early in the morning. They were getting up between 5:30 am and 6 am. My three-year-old daughter was getting up at 12:30-4 am. It was exhausting. This, plus the sixteen-hour drive to South Carolina and coming home to Indiana—were the most challenging parts.
But the highlight was driving through Smoky Mountain National Park.
So how do you take care of yourself when you’re not sleeping, in an unfamiliar setting, with a lot of social conversations and little help? Here’s what I figured out:
Don’t drink in excess because you might say something stupid. This, after the first night of barely any sleep, was more of a challenge to me to see how I would do while traveling and drinking more than one cocktail. It was dumb because I mostly started a political / culture war pissing contest with my brother and dad, and I was the only liberal in my family. This has been the case for going on twenty-plus years.
Make a plan. When communicating that plan to others, be cordial but don’t be people-pleasing when on family vacation—unless it is to your physical and mental well-being. What this means is that the answer to the kids getting up at 5:30 am is that it is perfectly okay to turn on the TV downstairs and go back to bed so that you can at least salvage some sleep because that has a direct connection to treating my nuclear family how they want to be treated. This also means that to preserve sanity, devise a plan for what you’re doing the night before so we don’t all have to wait around for everyone else to get up when Meggan and I have been awake for two to three hours already.
Set up individual maintenance modes for each parent. This answers what kinds of breaks you need to get your head screwed on straight after a tiring night, day, bedtime, or whatever. This meant either a 20-minute block of walking alone with no stimuli or comforting stimuli. Take photos. Sit under a tree and watch the natural world. I drew a gecko eating a cockroach, a heron floating over a marsh, and settling in for a fish snack—or be a snack for the many alligators in Hilton Head.
Keep a hyper fixation or particular interest with you when you need a break—a book, access to a podcast, a movie, or a show. For my (as of now, neurotypical) kids, it was Sonic Boom and Rescue Riders on Netflix. For Meggan, during the early morning TV, it was more sleep (for me too), or during quiet time in the afternoon, when my parents would be able to hang with the kids, it would be taking a nap or watching the Great British Baking Show in our room after bedtime. For me, it was listening to some particular interest (listening to the Life Moves Pretty Fast podcast, and for my meltdown day, it was watching The Breakfast Club on Amazon Prime after bedtime with my brother and dad) or reading alone. This is how I finished Breakfast with Seneca by David Fideler because I would get a regular quiet time in the afternoon for an hour or two.
The biggest lesson I took from Breakfast with Seneca was one I knew already. Still, I felt comforted by Fideler’s amiable tone and willingness to relate his experiences as an older father to a 7-year-old son. Is remembering that this is temporary. This “vacation” is quick. And that you will get home and have a day of rest. The idea of trips and vacations is to appreciate what you have at home and pay attention rather than avoid the pain of the trip. Because it’s temporary, and you’re more challenging than you think you are.
From My Notes
I did, however, have an autistic shutdown. Honestly, we all had breakdowns. On the fourth and final day in Hilton Head, there was no pleasing the kids or each other, and when I asked for a maintenance mode break, I wasn’t clear enough, and I snapped at the response. We didn’t have a plan for the second half of the afternoon, so we were allowing the kids to dictate the rest of the day, and of course, they wanted to do two different things. So to please them, we did both things, which just made the situation worse. I went for a walk to cool off to get my maintenance break, and things got slightly better. But I was still talking shit. I asserted that I was wrong, that I was tired, and that it was clear that we had all had it and were ready to go home.
But we had another 16-hour drive in front of us. But we had a great listen in the form of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. Which just was perfect for my lit nerd sensibilities. It made the drive achievable.
When we did get home—I had never felt more appreciative and grateful for living in Indiana in the almost six years we’ve been living here.
I hope this was helpful and that it serves some of you.
Cheers,
Dave
Listening to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse soundtrack