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I have a 9 year old son who I am about to embark on my 3rd cruise on Royal Caribbean with in December. I am extremely lucky, he is high functioning autism and he loves to travel probably more than I do. My dream in life is that he and I spend our lives traveling the world and I tell all of you about our adventures. I notice that he grows and truly happy when he is on an airplane, cruise ship, or exploring the world we live in. We have taken my boy, zip-lining, snorkeling, down water slides, on roller coasters, explored beaches, and pools and he has loved it all. He loves to visit hotels and even though he may have specific dietary preferences, we seem to have a great time.

As I spend more time talking to special needs families, the constant fear they have about travel is the unknown. We all have the same fear. What is going to happen, if they don’t have the right food, or my child has an outburst or gets hurt and people stare or come up to us. Anyone who has had a special needs child at some point or another has taken their child out has had some sort of negative experience and it has been so emotional or physically taxing that it has been easier to stay home than actually go. I remember one time I was at a fundraiser event for my older son’s school and my autistic son was playing in a bouncy house. He saw another boy pushing all the other kids in the bouncy house around. I saw my son mimic the other child’s behavior and just when I was about to tell him to not do that to the other children, the boys’ mother who was pushing all the other kids sprang up, rushed the bouncy house, grabbed my child, brought him to me, and told me, he was a bad child and what he was doing wrong. At first I was shocked, that this woman thought it was okay to physically grab my child, then she accused me of having such a bad child when if you looked back up into the bounce house, what was her child doing? Back to shoving all the children around. In my moment of shock at that time, I didn’t stick up for my child, since I couldn’t believe what was happening and I was “new” to the whole being a special needs mom thing. Now that I am “seasoned” I have learned that I have to advocate for my child. However, after that incident, there was a period of fear, of what could happen if I took my child out in public. So I didn’t. As time passed, I learned there is a whole community of people who don’t travel or go to activities with their wonderful children as complete family due to this same issue. I believe this has to change. Families should be able to go on vacation together and have access to activities without fear.