Destinations friendly for special needs children

Are you able to be any more specific? Would understand if not, but it might help. I’m just thinking that a location particularly suited to wheelchair users may be less suitable for someone with a sensory perception disorder, while someone with a learning difficulty or a visual impairment will have different requirements again.

With nothing to go on, It’s hard to offer advice beyond saying that anywhere with a reputation and reviews for willing customer service will be suitable for most – as where there’s a will to help, most issues can be overcome, particularly if you contact the hotel directly prior to travel with any particular requirements or concerns.

I think you need to bemore specific as to specific countries and resorts you may have in mind and the specific needs of your child.

Froggee wrote:

As an example my nephew had the biggest meltdown in his entire life at Heathrow airport on realising that after a ten hour long haul flight he was expected to get on a second plane. Even though this was just a one hour hop. From his perspective he’d endured torture in a strange hostile environment and managed to just about stay calm only to almost immediately be put in the same situation again. It did not compute. He hated business class as it placed him too far from his parents. Economy flights only from then on.

[joke]I also want to have a meltdown whenever I need to transit Heathrow.[/joke] (Fortunately not often as I live in London.)

About being too far from parents – are older aircrafts’ business classes not OK? For my son Club Europe and similar would be a complete waste of money as he would want to sit in the empty middle, but Qatar 777’s old layout would be acceptable and BA A380 upper deck central 3 would actually be perfect (except for the lack of side bins). However Club Suite and anything which has a door would not be suitable, also from a safety perspective if it’s not possible to see him during the “dangerous” periods of a flight when you’re meant to stay in your seat with belt on.

All these triggers. Heathrow connections and losing posts.

@John – the kid hated all business class. Simply, the closer to his parents, the better. The good news is that he’s now a borderline normal teenager who perhaps comes across as a bit weird but has some self awareness and has learnt a semblance of emotional intelligence by rote.

In the autumn he’ll be off to a mainstream university to study computer science. And awareness of autism is much, much higher now e.g. my firm is investigating hiring “neuro diverse” people for specific roles that they’ve been shown to perform very highly at. And before you think my firm is nice, the business case was sold as neuro diverse people are much more loyal once settled and less demanding in terms of compensation. Grubby management claiming to be doing good when they’re just after data processing on the cheap…

But again this takes us back to the original poster in that the needs of one autistic kid can be very different to another one.

Same with my teenager – he seems to have outgrown quite a lot of the issues which affected him and awareness of ASD is so much better these days – I’m hoping he will also be very employable in STEM industries when the time comes.

My mum was the first person to realise that he got very distressed in busy, noisy places (he would refuse to leave the house if he knew we were going someewhere like that, but couldn’t articulate why), and had the genius idea of popping cotton wool in his ears, which did the trick.
He still has anxieties about strange food and won’t eat anything on a plane. We take plain sandwiches or eat somewhere he’s familiar with before we fly, and tell cabin crew not to worry that he doesn’t want anything on board – it’s one less person for them to serve anyway!
Business class is ideal for us because he has his own space not too close to anyone he doesn’t know. He actually now loves curling up in CW with his phone or tablet and not having to interact with anyone for several hours! Thanks to HFP for that.
The main thing is to adapt to the child if you want minimal stress when travelling. We got a lot of stick in the early days for “pandering” to him but he is now a confident traveller and copes very well in social situations because of the experience.
It can actually work for you – when my son was four we went to Oz and NZ to see family and friends. We had little idea about his difficulties at that time but it coincided with his stage of being obsessed with aircraft so he loved the whole journey – we have a lovely photo of him sitting in the captain’s seat in the flight deck, wearing his hat, on arrival at Sydney! He had been so adorable on the long flight that several people mentioned it and the cabin crew invited him onto the flight deck as we were disembarking.

@BBB – it’s a shock and not what you wanted for your child but I’ve come to look at it that there’s no better time to have ASD – there is so much more awareness of it now and I can guarantee your toddler won’t be alone. ASD kids are an entire sub-group at my son’s school and seem to wear it as a badge of honour! Specials Needs facilities in schools are now excellent (check out these before applying for schools) and generally a diagnosis means extra funding so people will be falling over themselves to support your child.
One of my best friends works in IT and has been saying for years that a big proportion of her co-workers are ASD and are valued for their commitment and attention to detail.
I had an ASD colleague in the police who was told by the force medical officer not to worry as there would be loads of undiagnosed cases among our ranks (didn’t surprise me TBH!)
See it as what they CAN do rather what they CAN’T. And come back here for tips on coping with travel!

All that! Our son can cope in the queues now as long as he had his phone to distract him (though that might just be a teenage thing), but I wish they’d had the lanyard when he was younger.
We learned from painful experience about telling him in advance (at regular intervals), and still have to do this to some extent to prevent any meltdowns.