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Today I’m tying up lose ends for work, gathering guest posts for my personal blog (will have some fab content while I’m away!), and doing an insane amount of laundry.  All of this because tomorrow I’ll be leaving for Austin TX for the SxSWi conference, for 5 whole days.

The fact that I’m leaving for 5 days and it’s not a big huge deal, is really a big huge deal.  That I can go away at all, much less for that long, without the kids experiencing all kinds of issues, is truly a miracle.

Traveling with kids with autism (or any kind of special needs) takes a lot of planning and forethought, but traveling without them and leaving them at home requires just as much, if not more.  When we travel, even though their routines are out the window and they have a hard time handling even the smallest thing (like all the people in an airport, for example), at least I’m there with them and know I’ll be able to problem solve whatever comes up.

Traveling without them means setting up all their routines, diet, schedule, medications, help, outings etc, ahead of time.  Foreseeing any potential bumps in the road, making sure every last tiny detail is figured out ahead of time, and last but not least — preparing them for my absence.

There was a time when I couldn’t leave for even a day, much less 5.  It wasn’t worth putting them through it, and with autism any regression is scary because there’s always the risk of them not bouncing back this time.  Of them staying in that darker place, lost and disconnected.

So today as I’m a little stressed from not enough time and too much to do, I also celebrate that this is all happening.  Every step of progress is one that we celebrate, and today, we’re celebrating.

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Arianne also writes at her personal blog To Think Is To Create

Tags: Autism, special needs travel, sxsw, travling mom

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 12:26 pm and is filed under parent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.