Episode 8 - Holidays and Travelling

(upbeat music) Welcome back to the ASN Dad Chat, we're a podcast and community dedicated to making sure no ASN Dad in Scotland has to walk this path alone. Our goal is simple, real talk, real honesty, and sharing our own experiences to help you navigate the system. Whether you're in our army tap group already, or just finding us now, we've got a seat at the table. And just a reminder, we aren't experts, we're just kids, and this is just experiences and opinions, not medical advice, not legal advice. Then let's go on with the chat today. (upbeat music) Hello and welcome back to ASN Dad Chat. This is episode eight, I'm Andy, and joined by Glenn. - Hello. - And for the first time we have Barry. - Hello. - So welcome to the podcast, Barry, it's good to have you for the first time in front of the microphone this time. - Good to be here. - As opposed to contribute to something rather than taking things out this week. - Yeah, definitely do you want to. - Tell us a bit about yourself, just before we get going. - Yeah, I am, Barry, I do the kind of edit inside of things on the podcast here, basically through my, through my sum, BroDZ's six, goal on seven, and he got diagnosed with autism at the age of about four. Yeah, we kind of spotted the early signs of them from about 18 months or so, and got referred to speech and language, ended up with a, can a fast track diagnosis? Do you own code? I don't know if I'm the same sort of process, but the other actually saw, that was just, is Kate Scott presented, and that was essentially, that was that. - Yes. - And we've been, yeah, loving that life ever since. - I was first introduced to Barry at one of my resident haunts, the Eiffel in East Kilbroughde. Never respoke to each other, just kind of jumped past each other every now and again. - Too busy, Chase. - Too busy chasing kids. - A lot of people here. - Yeah, it's been, it's been a good journey, it's been good to be involved in, and to meet different, different people through it as well, with different struggles, several struggles, and we're all kind of, - Everything in between, yeah. - Good to have you on board. Well, yes, so this episode, don't we're looking to focus on, is holidays, traveling, any sort of tips that we can give, or don't some traveling myself with Ashton, and all, you're the same Barry with Brody, we're just looking to see if we're in, and that we can do to make it a bit easier for, for any of our parents out there, 'cause I know it's a stressful time for some people. - So I'm very limited with this, because we haven't done a lot of, the very small amount of traveling we've done with Elijah, is has been, just for events, like we've traveled down to Birmingham with Elijah once, where he was very, very young. He wasn't even, I don't even think he was a year old, when we traveled. So it was very different than the idea of traveling with him now, and I think for myself, I don't know if anybody else, the idea of traveling with Elijah, which is bad as it is, it gives him the idea of anxiety, because I know he wants to be open, and I know he wants to be active, and I want, and Jade wants to be able to take him back to Birmingham to my home, 'cause I've got so many friends and family that have never met my voice. But the idea of going on a train, to head down safe, again, anxiety. So I do look forward to the idea of hearing from what you guys say, and hope that there might be something that I can take away from this today. Yeah, I think the anxiety is okay. (laughing) No pressure, no pressure. Yeah, I think the anxiety is natural, and I'm still, as every time we travel, I mean, the anxiety gets a little bit less, but I think with everything is just that kind of planning, but I know that before the first thing that we did, any sort of travel, and so, meaning like, taking a national plane, I was worried about things like, how we're gonna get them to stay seated in the plane, how is it gonna be when we're going through all the different cues through the airport? Ashton's got a very loud vocal stem, where he screams kind of very frequently, so there's that worry that is he gonna do that. I feel like when what's the hearing of playing that? Yeah, exactly, so it's that, it's almost kind of, that was more of our anxiety, so it was definitely something that we had to build up to, but I think everyone has that worry. Oh, but you're bad here, where you're feeling before, going traveling with Brody. I think, to be honest, I think I had the benefit of having, having a good, 'cause you and you are that, I don't know, sort of not too long before that, so I kind of spoke to you a fair bit, and I think it's learning from other people's experiences and stuff like that, and just trying to, trying to think that we potentially cause you stress, just trying to get that out, we try to avoid the situations that, because the strength for you or for the kids. Yeah. So, that's kind of, that's a big part of it for me as well, is accepting that there's going to be things that just aren't going to go to plan, and holding your hands up and kind of, you can't control it, so just try and, try and kind of roll the punches, and back in it depends on the, depends on the kids themselves, and we're quite fortunate that Brody, he loves planes with a passion, so as long as I can find somewhere that he can see planes, that's at least a starting point, for us to consider themselves, and then, yeah, that's something's easier said than done, but that's, yeah, try and identify, if you, you know, places that you can be, that'll keep everybody a bit calm yourself, and then, and speak to staff, once I, some are great, some are not, it's good, right? Yeah, I think it's all about the planning, but there is definitely those worries, obviously we talked about that, they're glimnier looking to, to ideally go back to Birmingham, so I mean, what is your, kind of biggest, what is in terms of that? I think for me, to begin with, when he was just a lighter, now he's a lighter, and nowhere, which is a whole different kettle of fish, I think one of them is, I don't drive, judges are driving, so, driving down, that kind of becomes a no-go straightaway, because the amount of stuff that we'd have to take, and then the idea that she would potentially have to do, like a 7/8 hour journey driving, and a essentially on her own, and then the idea of the boys being able to stay in the car that long, a lighter struggle sometimes, when we were in the car for any time longer than an hour, we've gone to Monty's a couple of times, and that is quite a trek out from where we are in Glasgow to try to get there, so definitely not as bad on the way there, but coming back, obviously, when you've had a full day, that can be very overseen, and obviously, just trying to keep them steady in the car, that can be quite stressful, so I think it's a list of things, obviously, it's the case of, okay, so if we were going to go down, we'd potentially have to take a train, which is fine, obviously, I think it'd be okay, some kind of other train, because the idea of a train, I think, would interest them, but again, it's actually, say, trying to keep them in a seat, trying to keep them confined into a space, and then as I say, the amount of things we'd have to travel with, then when we got down there, we probably had to rent a car anyway, so it feels like we've lost what we'd be doing, regardless if we just didn't drive down, and then obviously, just making sure that we still had something for him to do when he got down there, and not just spending time with family, and then having to find new airs and things that we could do for the kids in a different city, obviously, I haven't lived in Glasgow, in Birmingham for quite some time, so there'd be, have to be, so much research done beforehand. And I spoke about it before, I've said before that I feel like I'm holding out on the kids because they're not getting to go on holiday, obviously that's a fairly family-oriented thing that you work hard all year round to give yourself, you yourself and your family a holiday, a break from the monotomy of life as it is. But we're all a bunch of gingers, I can't. The idea of taking four of us to a sunny place, I hate the sun the best, the time in Scotland, we don't get it that much, but can you imagine trying to do four of us in Spain or something like that? Yeah, so it's not even the travel that's the hardest part, it's one of you actually in the air, to do with that as well. Yeah, the anxiety, as I've said, of travel as it was, planes I think would be a struggle for a larger. I think similar, he'd probably like the idea of being on a train, but the idea of trying to have to keep him seated, like when you're going up or you're going down or at this turbulence or like the idea of, okay, how do I deal with these things when they happen? So again, I do look forward to hearing how you guys have dealt with these from the beginning, from like going on a plane, and then what you do when you go abroad. Yeah, I mean, as I say, we've been abroad a few times with Ashton, it definitely not always been kind of playing sailing, I mean, to start with, we flew a few times when Ash was a baby, but I wouldn't really say that kind of currents in terms of the anxiety and juicing was a bit different then, but in terms of, we kind of took him on his first holiday where he was kind of aware it was going on, it was very, very difficult at the airport. I can remember, we did get special assistance, so we managed to skip some of the cues and things, but I just remember at that point, Ashton was having quite a bad meltdowns, he was kind of frequently kind of head banging, whether that was on off the walls, off the floor, so it was a very, very anxious experience as it was at that point before anything happened, But I remember when we got to the airport, when we got to go through security, going through the metadetectors, we were told, no, no, we can keep action. And he's kind of pram at this point. You know, problem sort of thing. And then we got to security and they were like, no, no, no, no, he has to come out, he's just, um, pram. And we were, we're adamant, we were like, no, no, this can't happen. If he comes out this pram, it's not going to end well because they will be very upset. Even the fact that we have to take his tablet off him to get it to go through security, it was hugely problematic at that point as well, but the dead insist again, no, no, he has to come out the pram, which resulted in him lying on the floor, just banging his head off the floor with, um, chair on, I just getting kind of very upset with it, trying to struggle to get him back into the pram and you're thinking, oh, this is great, kind of welcomed here, the start of your holiday. Um, but it was, is very difficult. And even, I remember at that point, again, even boarding the flight, so you're just up there just waiting to go on the board. So it's, it's before you're even on the flight, you've got a lot of waiting to do. Um, and over as we elected to board the plane first, so as that when the action was going through, there wasn't a lot of people there, we could get him to his seat and go from there, but it was very, very difficult the first time that we did it. Um, it definitely did get better through kind of more planning and using different services, but one of the kind of biggest recommendations, I would say it just, again, kind of trust you when I instinct you know the best if, if, as I say, if you don't want your child to come out the pram, just make sure that it doesn't happen. It doesn't have to happen as we know now. Um, but anything that you can do that's going to, kind of keep your child calm, anything like that at all, just make sure that you, you speak to their port about it because the, the specialist assistance services, I've found have been generally good. Um, I mean, whether you bad, it was your first time, was there any sort of problem? Similar, similar story, not what we were quite fortunate at the first time it was, it was quite a humanist, a humanist check. And so I, um, we put some, I've just put all the information down the can on the book and things like that and then we get to the check in desk and we're obviously checked in, luggage, luggage is a whole check, passports are all across. And, um, the moon behind the desk is like, so is it your son is he autistic? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, is that, is that on the note? Since she was like, oh no. That's a brief thing to be said. Um, but as it turned out, he had legal truly in his mouth. And she was like, oh my god, I don't know how he uses the human body. But I actually basically given his advice, like, go straight to special assistance, they all, they all kind of sort you, give you all the information that you need, which was, which was, which was as much as it was a rescue buyer, it was, it was brilliant. - So yeah, the can I usually set him off so that like the, the, the, the, the Lanyard, God bless it, uh, helps us a lot. We tend, not so much now, because he's probably been too big for it, but we always had the kind of trunk area and he would just sit on the trunk. - Yeah. - I would, I pretty much mean him this year and he, of course we'll just go wandering and I'll, I'll drag him around and have a laugh. - Mm-hmm, um, Matt Moe's a bit more of a kind of nervous flyer so I just kind of leave, leave, hurrying, usually with other people kind of leaving him to it. Um, just trying to, trying to kind of stay as calm as possible again, like kind of say before it's just so much easier said than done. Um, but yeah, and that the, the, the queue jumped saying the things is, is good, but it's some of the looks you get are kind of people that don't quite like that. - Yeah. - Are you going in front of them? I might be, you know, with the, with the you do, just gonna be a testic for them, and it's, yeah. - And it's a long, long show and why were you not getting to the front of the thing? - And I don't know if I can pick them and the queue and watch them go. - I don't know if it's the same with you, is there? Also, Ashton wouldn't wear the Lanyard, so one of us would have to wear it so I think you get a look, kind of like, when, where are you wearing that Lanyard? - Yeah, 100%, 100%. - It's, it's trying to find, is it, obviously, your, the certain restrictions in the airport, you know, when, when we, when we were recently, we were trying to get again, a good, a good view of the planes, but it was all checking this. And, like, I know this, this gate's shut, not checking this, sorry, the bargeur gates, so the gates are shut, so I'm not here. And, like, is this a procedural thing, is this a security thing, or is this just you being awkward, type of thing, so it's trying to, trying to kind of advocate for them, um, - Stanley, without, kind of, winding people up and stuff like that. But that's interesting about the, the buggy situation, I don't know, is it, is, is I thought, can a security trumps everything on that, I suppose? - No, so what we've found, kind of now, so, kind of, to kind of revisit it now, the, in terms of the planning part, so what we've done more recently is we've gotten contact with the, kind of, specialist services, the specialist assistance at the airports, and we've been able to go for tours a few weeks before supposed to fly, so it usually would be like a first thing in Sunday morning, where the airport is very quiet. What others, they'll walk you through the full process, you'll, you'll go through security, you'll get scanned through the same way you would, they'll take you to one of the departure gates and show you this is exactly what happened here. Here's what's going to happen, um, the last bit when your flight is, so they can try and tell you, okay, it's going to be quite busy at this point, here's where you can go, here's all the different facilities, the place that they can help you, um, so in terms of the specialist assistance, they, they were absolutely brilliant, and that's been Glasgow airport, Edinburgh airport, press with airport. Um, they've been absolutely brilliant in terms of that, but I think it is you just need to make sure that you just say, um, exactly what your child needs, um, and they'll try to help you as best you can, and we did explain this to them after the kind of nightmare of the first trip, we explained what it was, and ever since then we've, we've never had to take them out the problem. I mean, we always have to empty everything out of it, sort of thing, because there's nothing there and what they'll do is usually just swab them, um, and what we've learned now after that first flight is we'll always have, kind of, two phones or two tablets, so as that we'll put one through first, one of them will go through an electrolyase, as soon as it actually goes through, there's another one waiting for them. And it's just things like that, you just learn in terms of like, or whether it's having specific snacks or so, for example, we did the tour, we, what we're trying to do is we bought them some crisps when you were the shop was, so as he could then relate to that being like, okay, once I go through here, I'll get crisps with the shop. There's just we things like that that we found were, or could a beneficial, I mean, the tours themselves are brilliant, and the fact that it usually is the same person that you'd see on the day as well, so it's just great to be able to know that they're going to actually help you through there. And I would definitely say that the, the kind of whole experience for Ashton in terms of departure airports has been much, much better the last few times we've went and I guess again, that's across the three different airports. Yeah, I didn't have a, we, one of the days we flew out a new castle, and I didn't find that as good as the Scottish airports at all. Yeah, because we're throwing out a glass of impress, but we're only were both excellent in Newcastle, so it just seemed that we bit less kind of geared on closer to that. Not necessarily inclusive, but just they, again, a lot of things it can be individuals. Yeah, it can be one person in that, something home is kind of trying to do as well. Like if someone does kind of offer like a, you know, a bit understanding, you know, improves that experience or help you avoid what could have been a really difficult situation. I think it's really important to kind of get, you know, highlight that to, to necessarily people kind of think I know on the flip side, tell them if it's, if, if there's something that they can do better. Because a lot, a lot of time there, they're learning. Yeah, it's a lot of awareness, have the time that they're not, they're not trying to be difficult for either a lot of them at their job, but I think that's what it's so important. You just need to make sure you're vocal, because even if they are special assistants, as everyone knows, all of our kids are completely different sort of thing, which what could set one off could be what one other one demands sort of thing. So I think you need to make sure you're clear and exactly what you need and they'll be happy to help you. So yeah, I would just definitely. On the airport website, you'll see links for special assistants. You can email them, say exactly what you need, what you're looking to do and they can help you. And that's what they're for as well. Don't worry about being fussy or being difficult, it's literally what they're doing. Did you, did you find, did you stick with the last man on the plane? I think or did you switch out? So I remember that, so we've always, no matter what, when we're boarding, we'll always go on first. Right. Always. Where are the opposite? We are absolute last. Oh really? See, we just go in because it's that way of, if we go on the flight and everyone's on there, Ashton would probably just get so distracted and it would be difficult to even get them to the seat. And more of the fact that I hate kind of boarding the plane when people are on it as well because everyone's standing there and everything, have to be working in luggage. I think one of the main ones for us is we usually have quite a few bags. So that's another thing to touch on at the first time that we traveled. We had so many bags, so many carry on because it was all the different things we needed for Ashton. But then you're struggling to carry all that, I had to carry Ashton my arms as well. And we had, because we had the Pram, you can get a huge Pram bag to essentially carry that to the, to the, to the right up to the plane door as well. So you've got all these things. So it also means that if you board the plane first, we always wanted to make sure that we've got Ashton's bags right above us. Whereas if you board last, then there's, there's going to be no space there for, for anything to go on. But yeah, I think first to board, but then you always, you really have to, if you're wanting the special assistance, you really have to get off the flight last. And so we don't usually tend to take it getting off the flight. We usually just got off when we can. And then one share in the other airport, there's usually someone that, again, if you've signed that by usually sign up in terms of the. The arrival airport as well. And whether that's been kind of like Molotas being in and we've been, we've been able to kind of meet up with someone there to try and help us through. And kind of passport control. And that sort of stuff. I remember the one time that we did use the special assistance to kind of get off the plane, we ended up having to wait. so much longer, so much longer. Today we gave him, it was like a lift to get down the stairs and the stairs. So it was just everyone in wheelchairs plus as with Ashton Ashton's going insane because we couldn't go off the flight yet. But it's all kind of learning points like you don't, there's, there we certain services you don't need certain services you do. Again, it's just whatever's right for your child. Yeah, we, we tend to, we, we definitely will last but, is that for choices? Is that just because you're obviously? Both to be honest, he is. Just me like, I'm that you're still going on. I'm that you're still going on to planes dead last. Anyway, but it's, it's, it must look hilarious because any bags it will block, Kate attends to go on with all the bags. And I'll maybe have a couple of wee bits and bobs can I think, because I'm, I've got the buggy as well. So I've got the fae, if he's in the buggy or the trunk here, whatever it may be. But it must look hilarious that, you know, she struggles on with all the bags and gets the bags above the seat. And then I just swore on about 60 seconds before take off with a sunflower. Sunflower. Sunflower. That's when I really need to have it. I'm not actually a terrible, a terrible person. There's a reason behind that. I'm not leaving ever at the wave. So in terms of the flight then, obviously the actual flight itself, how have you found the kids have dealt with this? He's been more often than not great. It's, it's always been kind of two, two, two, two, three or a flight something that has never been sort of long hauler. I mean, like that, because he would, he would get bored, but just having as much as he can in the way a distractions, new toys, a lot of the time as well, just sort of things that you know, you'll like. But having that kind of fast experience with them and just things that you know, we're going to take up his time essentially. And we always have him sitting in the middle as well, just purely from making a, would take the distraction at the way. I think if he was sitting in the nail, he'd be looking up and down the nail and he would see something and want to go up and down and we're up hoping he'd never been able to. So try to do those kind of things and just snacks, playing his snacks, playing the, playing the distractions and that's just for me. But, yeah, so yeah, I mean, I remember the, one of the first times in the flight with him when he was about older at one point he was kind of like, like, I want to go for a, he wanted to kind of go up to the back of the plane sort of thing. Like, oh, that's fine. Let's just kind of see. Keep him calm sort of thing and then he gets up to the back and he goes off, off, off. I'm like, no, like, Cheryl, quick, get him back to his seat. And so it is that way of, and I think one of the difficult things in a flight, which is very, very difficult. And as I say, that Ashton is kind of 90% toilet trained, but it has been most of the times in the flight, just for kind of his ease and overall that you will wear like a pull-up. But at that point, it is so difficult to try and change someone in those toilets. You can barely stand yourself. How did you manage it? And then the fact as well that I was worried about flushing the toilet when Ashton was in there because I've had a load of it. It's like a jet engine firing out of it. But again, it's these things that you just kind of get used to because obviously, too big now for us to pull down the tiny little table above the toilet and line up there. So, yeah, it is a very tight squeeze. But in terms of the flight itself, if I're asking it's been again, like Barry said, lots of snacks, lots of toys. I remember at first, it was like, let's bring all the safe of toys, but then eventually you're learning like, okay, the smallest wee toys, probably aren't the best as soon as they fall off. When they want to try and build up on one of these kind of wobbly airflip airport or airplane tables, is essentially just going to make them even more upset when they start to fall over or anything like that. So, he usually has like the phone or the tablet, you'll have his headphones. Usually, it will kind of keep the seat belt on him, but sometimes they like to kind of move about they would go between the windows seat or the middle seat. And the first few flights we had him on, they would sleep on the flights, which was obviously brilliant. But more recently, this thing a week, so it has just been a case of snacks. I remember one of the times where our land reaction was sitting on the floor with about four phones in front of him, just covered and snacks at that point. And really, okay, there's not long to go, we just need to give him everything that there is to just kind of keep going here. But the actual flight itself not being easy, but I think the airport was definitely the more difficult thing. It is just trying to to keep mockingpiding the kind of longer flights that we've done, where it's kind of being like four or five or our flights. Yeah, I think we'd one sort of the same meltdown, I think. Again, with the kind of rickson strikes, we'd read that we can't see it, but what was it just for the stroke, the kind of fold down straw, I think. So we'd one of them that we'd had from basically kind of just through the security gates. And you wanted to try to give him a just at one point, but obviously the air pressure changes. So without realizing something like this straw is really like a stock, I don't know what's going on, managed to flick it up and it just spucked juice everywhere. I was down, just probably was down, just getting it was down to the women in front of us was down. And it was just kind of one of those, again, one of those situations, just like try and just make a joke of it. Because he was completely non-plus. Okay, he was raging at me. Warp so for the women in front of us, she was just like, what are you doing? So it's the inevitable, things are kind of going to happen. Do you ever, does he ever kind of wander up and down nails? No, no, that's what I'm saying. We did let him do it the first time when that's when he was kind of off. I mean, I think it's that way, I mean, right now, this period of time, 100%, I would not let him do it because he would try and pickpocket everyone on the flight. I'm trying to take every phone that he could find. So that would, I mean, in terms of anxiety, I mean, I'd be trying to go off the flight at that point. That's where everybody wants to hear and play no for. But how do you find the kind of other people's kind of responding to? Well, I was going to say, I think it really depends. So if you're next to people that you can talk to or that or some of these, what we'll do is if we're going on like holidays, some of these will get shared with family to fly with us as well, we'll make sure that they are strategically positioned in front and behind the ashden sort of thing so they can take the brunt of any kicks or hits and like that in which makes it a lot easier. I don't think we've had many other kind of passengers saying I can't, I'm sure what are the first flights we're on, but it was more than it was a baby. The kind of usual tuts when there's a baby on board, but I can't remember anything else. Other than that, or but you guys. I'm just going to ask because it's obviously any other social environment just condensed like everybody does, there's no getaway from from sort of individual's type of thing, but I've never really noticed and I think we want to say that I noticed that I noticed that the people in the queue is looking a bit miff that we're sort of scooting on in front of them, but I think it's one of those people are generally kind of keep themselves themselves, but you hear a lot of sat in front of a baby on a flyer or whatever. I love you seeing that, is it one of the Japanese, the Japanese airline, they actually highly on their flights, they wear as a baby, so as you're picking your seat you can choose not to go near them. I've seen it, it was quite a thing that someone had put on line on the camera, I've seen it, but it was a deaf person, I'd be like, I just sit right behind that baby, no one goes near as it's perfect, it's silence. Nobody's kept my cheer, fantastic, yeah, yeah, yeah, I tend to end up with anything we've been away with, we've been with Katie's family, so I've always sat in front of her, sat in front of her minutes, he's always been sat between Katie's and I, so it's been quite quite good. Just one of the, we got them, you know, the busy book things, it's like, it looks kind of like a busy book, but like we can have you have the whole crowd cards that you sat a second, so we got them out for the blood of seeing, so I'm trying to get new toys and things that we know we'd be into, so we hadn't even unwrapped it and unwrapped it in the wee sticky bits, we aren't even on the cards yet, so I just sit for like half an hour, putting this toy together, and it looks like it was for me, but anyway, sitting with your stuff, I think you did in your busy book. Yes, I, in my sippy cup. Yeah, I mean I think, almost a little more, I think is when you actually get a broad, to be honest, when we get a broad, they generally can approach for us, is stuff that we try and do anyway, so I think trying to, trying to kind of manage, like your approach to whether it's going out for dinner or whatever we're doing generally, just trying to pick stuff that's for him rather than things that we would have done on holiday, you know, many, many wasn't on the scene. I think going out for food is definitely the most difficult part of it because he's quite restricted in what he eats and he's restricted in how long he wants to sit still for, so. Well that's like when we actually, when we go and holiday now, we also choose our locations based on how close the nearest McDonald's is, just because like you'll know yourself, you'll go abroad and in a thing obviously with autistic kids especially, they can tell if something's different, I think, especially if you go to a lot of European countries, the chicken can be a bit more grain, it just looks a bit different, so it's straight away it's a, a no go, so we'll always make sure that we've got the, the fall back of the McDonald's, we'll also bring a lot of his safe foods in the house, whether it's like things like curry powder to me, curry that he loves or lots of different things, we'll just have big kind of bags of different foods that we could have brought from the UK forum, so as we've got it, I mean there are certain things that you'll eat but we always just want to make sure sure that we've got that is a backup for them. We're the same, we're kind of boxes of cereal and things like that, that tends to be, we can always, always just guarantee a wee bit of cereals or something like that. And at least, as well as at least the, if he's eating something, that's the, that's the main thing, even if we don't sit down and they stick down on you, you know, the variety box or whatever. How did you tend to find like the actual like, where you're staying, like hotels wise and like places you're going to deal with our kids? Um, the two of the hall, is it we've been on before, and after that, Katie's uncle has a kind of time sharing type of thing. So it's been the same place we've been on to the hall, is it we've went to. So they kind of know the way about and they know the people there. So it's, I think we can benefit it from, from their family, are with them. And they knew there was like, this is like two or three different swimming pools at it and they'd say like that one's the quietest which was unfortunately indoor, so it was absolutely roasted in. But, um, that was kind of a daily thing, which was, was going there and, you know, we never really kind of found, found too many problems with that. In fact, at the same time, we went back, he'd, he actually, it was like 18 months, two years later. Um, so from, I from age of about four, about six, and he was straight to the pool again, he was at the very worst type of thing, which was, which was really good. I think that, familiar, he's good, but that's not really something you get on a kind of stand up all day and the same place as you own here. Um, but, you know, about yourself, you, so what we've done for our kind of family holidays recently is we've, we've just went through the Airbnb's, so we've kind of researched our tea in terms of, that's good. That's good. Again, what's nearby? Um, so for example, one of the ones who stayed at, um, went to Fort Ventura, we made sure that there was a, there was a pool in the garden. It was completely enclosed. There was no way for it to escape. Um, it was ashrata, it was all around the pool, so it means they could run about, it wasn't gonna fall. Um, it was all on one floor, so it just meant that Ashton could go in, could go outside of the thing, there wasn't any sort of issues there. And it was, and the full thing for us is that Ashton's best only has as much freedom as possible. If you start to put these restrictions on him, that's where he starts to kind of get a lot more tense and more likely to ferment down. So for us, it was making sure that we find a place that, I mean, yes, in a good location for us and there's good things there, but there's a lot of things that has to hit to make it kind of good enough for Ashton. Um, and it is mainly as an uphill because he spends 90% of the time there. Um, and essentially, is it secure that he isn't gonna have to get watched 24/7 to jump a wall or something sort of thing? So that is our main things. And I think that the fact that you can do that, it just does, it takes that anxiety off you sort of thing. I know that if you go to a hotel or in, you might find, you make it lucky and find one, it's very good to that. But for us, we've just found that if we find these places that we can actually kind of switch off as much as possible and Ashton kind of, um, have as much freedom as possible. Um, I mean, how have you found that gliding terms of even in the UK wise, like, hold, like, hotels or anything if you had to use anything like that much for Elijah? I've never had to. That's one of the things, obviously. I think what you're saying about the MB and B's, that's definitely something that we would, we'd look into as well, like, simply to yourself Elijah does well when he's got his freedom. Yeah. Um, but still, would prefer to have that contained. So the idea that he had his own pool that we wouldn't have to worry about other kids, we wouldn't have to worry about other families. I think that would be a key thing for us. I think if we ever were to do this, I think a hotel would be a no go. Yeah. I think we'd look at some sort of like private villa, um, and obviously the cost of effectiveness of the cons with that as well is, uh, yeah. Is his own thing? Um, but yeah, I think I'd, I mean, you said about the air being being thing, I was like, "Oh, you actually make sense?" Like, you wouldn't have to go through, like, looking at hotels, you wouldn't have to try and see, okay, what do these have for for our kids? Like, I bet they're going to be enough. I bet he's going to be like, how early do I have to get downstairs for the towels at the pool? Like, um, but no. Yeah, I think that's definitely something I would look at. We've thankfully never had to do hotels with a manager. Um, so the idea of the fact that he'd have to be stuck in one room. Yeah. Um, I don't know how long he'd last. Like, even in our house, obviously like, he has his own room, so he's fine to just, you can go and up and down the stairs. Like, he can spend as much time as he wants, the living room spends as much time up to there as he wants. Um, but trying to confine him to one space for too long, I don't know how well. He would cope, how we would cope. Yeah. Um, especially as he got older, um, he does enjoy his own space, he does enjoy his own, his own, his own time. So, yes, I think if that was something that we would look at as well, I think that would be similar to what we would do. Yeah, I think we've had where, where anything would be in our hotel as well as sleeping in the same room and trying to get the voice out of you. Yeah. Yeah. And if that's what you're going to holiday, like, and I think that's one of the things for us with Airbnb is like, yeah, like you want to make it as, as calm and as accommodating as much for kids, but at the same time, it's also your holiday as well. So you don't want to spend the full time, I know that for a fact that there's been times that we'll go to, to hotel's with Ashley and there has been times that's been great, but a lot of the time might anxiety is a lot higher than it would be if it was our air being be in us, only us that are there and I can kind of cater everything for Ashton. So, yeah, I think the kind of biggest bit of advice would be just kind of plan, plan, plan as much as you can. Yeah, if you, so you've got your singing lot done any kind of sort of, like, sneak-assions and anything. No, we looked at, we looked at going back to a place that me and J did for our mini-moon after our wedding. It's called Piper Dam. Yeah, yeah, no. We looked at maybe doing something like that, no, that obviously we've got the car and we could get out of there ourselves. Yeah. But I think it's a case, it's a similar thing, like, we'd have to, we'd have to be something to do every day. Yeah. So you are still not, you'd have to still make sure everything was still planned out as much as you can, obviously, like you're saying, like, plan events, trying to sort things out. And again, having to bring so much with us to try and make sure he was as comfortable as he could be. I've never said never. Obviously, I do want to be able to give them the opportunity to be able to go out of Glasgow and see something that isn't the four wars that are housed. But I think, obviously, they've listened to you guys and have you spoke about things, obviously, how some of the other dads and the community have spoken about stuff. It gives me the confidence that we can do these things. I think you've just been a case of getting past my own fear. Yeah. Yeah. And my mother-in-law's partner, he's always talked about, he wanted to do a family holiday. He, as I said before, he works to make sure he gets himself a holiday every year. But the type of things that I was like, when him and Joseph have these conversations, he's like, he's all well and good that you'd want to do that. But it wouldn't be as simple as just booking a hotel and going down to somewhere and just be like, we're going to go there. We would have to spend weeks, months, looking at whatever we were going to do for this. Yeah, I think if we were going to do, we'd probably start small. We'd have a look at. We'd have a look at Caravans or an Airbnb somewhere, as you've said, somewhere that we could still have a sort of staycation. We could have, like, I think you'd do well and somewhere rural, where you could still have a time where you could run around and stuff for that. So, it'd be our own space. Yeah. That's something that the voice kind of, I would give him, that is, I don't know if you would have done anything similar, they almost kind of do in a couple of these sort of stay occasions for a moment, but we'd went to the kind of haven places that come up with times and they're not, they're not the most cleverest of all of these, but sometimes it's enough to get you, get your break, you know. I went there when I was younger and I absolutely loved it. I'm through no shade, they haven't bought it, so whatever. I know, I did, I did as well. I think the look for those things when we were kids is you could just pour enough, you kids, with, like, this poor 18-year-old that's just doing, like, holiday school work. But I don't think I could do that with a live drive. We never had to, but we'd date like the kind of kids club singles or anything like that. But the last time we went, we had, it was really good time of year, it was before we met school, so it was really good. We managed to get it so during a quiet time, and the caravan we had had like a kind of terror trend as well, so we could get out and run about. Right. But it was still secured, so it wasn't going anywhere, but we still had that kind of freedom run about. Mm-hmm. This woman who was there as well, which we were in there kind of everyday and stuff like that, and we never did any of the standard kind of kids things in that scenario, like, the first time we went away, sorry, sent him away, it was sent at a box. Right. But check in, like, it's rural, it can detect all those boxes. And we had kind of signed up for the kit, so it can make see-play class, and he just hated it. He loves makes see-play usually, but just can't feel a, just too busy for him, and so we ended up being twice now, and I don't think we've booked any other actual activities. It's more just doing you know and think. Doing your own thing. He likes to sit in the trailer thing in the bike, and I would take him around the park and stuff, which is, it's easier when he was smaller. And then I was smaller. But yeah, it's trying to find, I think there's, like you say, a lot to kind of, you need to try and find where you would fit into these kind of, or where the kids would fit into these kind of, you know, all these kind of things. And remember, we did Center Parks and, it used to be shared with all those take action to these classes and clubs and there was one on Center Parks. Like, do you want to go up and do it? And I think it was one of these ones where I think it was kind of just after Covid and it was a case of right, okay, so you need to make sure all the kids stay sitting down within this little hula hoop sort of thing. So I've spent the full time trying to just hold after in here. I've just like, oh, it was horrific sort of thing. So yeah, I think clubwise, I think a lot of them are really suitable. But yeah, we've done, we've actually went to one of these ASN caravans as well that you can hire out for the weekend and it was great, it was that way of, if your kids are into sensory toys or all these sort of things, it's just kind of all the rooms. I want to see Hagger's in Castle, but it could also be completely wrong. But it was that way where everything was kind of full of like all the rooms had different lights and sensory toys everywhere and it had the different tables with the shapes and everything. And again, you've got access to like, swimming and stuff. So even things like that are obviously good just to try and get away and we did Center Park last year, maybe the year before. We took action to Legoland, which was good. So we had managed to get tickets the first year for that through something called Maryland One, I think it is. Okay. Essentially something that you can get as a carer for disabled children that you'd basically get tickets to something whether it could be seawurrow, there's quite a few different things we decided let's try Legoland. So we decided let's try Legoland. So we drove down to Legoland and the second time we went because we absolutely loved it the first thing we stayed overnight. Or we stayed overnight the first thing as well actually in the Legoland hotel, which for me was really cool and there was lots of Legoland stuff, but action did not cater to Legoland stuff at all. And it's one of these things where you're like, "Come on, you must love this." So in terms of the actual park itself, he absolutely loved it, but the travelling down, it is quite long and again it is that we have tried to keep them occupied, trying to keep them kind of busy. But the hotel that we stayed in, the second time at Legoland, I think it was just a Hilton and Ashton was absolutely brilliant. He was quite happy to go down to Srimmimpool. We went out for dinner to a place nearby. We found a huge park and everything, so I think it is that we have tried to make these places feel as much like home as possible, trying to find parks and trying to not just stay in the room the full time because it can be tempting to just, "Oh, there's the tablet, here's the phone," but then again you look at it and you're saying it's not really much of a holiday for anyone. So yeah, I've been travelling quite a few times with Ashton, so if anyone's got any questions about this area and I think then yeah, definitely feel free to send them in and myself, barrier, I'm sure other dads will be happy to help. I think the other thing just going back to the staycation, sort of the other thing is really, we're going to have some castle lights and I mean we've been a bit of a headache and setting a park, so it's imping-rith and stuff like that. We can approach that if this is an absolute disaster, we're too, or is not, is not, do you mean, you can kind of, if it doesn't quite work. It's just one of those things that's at a field of experiment and it gives you the chance to build up to take in them somewhere further afield and it gives them the chance to get used to it, so it's almost kind of managing, well you always need to manage your expectations when you're planning these things, it's all to have in that, like forget it. But there, if it's not working out, it's, you know, distressing them too much or whatever, whatever. The other thing I found quite beneficial in me, but I was trying to maintain a technical sleep pattern, what do you do when you're going to use it? So yeah, we know that, in fact that's one of the other big things, so I remember we're first booking flights to Goa Broad, usually what we would do, so let's try to get the first flight of the day, if you want to get me the most at the end of everything. But again, that was horrific for action, so it just meant that he just woke up in a taxi at like five in the morning, freaked out and then from then on in the rest of the day, I'm pretty sure that was the time when the airport where everything just turned into nightmare. So now it's a case of booking a flight that's kind of midday and everything and then we're getting back to the airport and it's one of these things where I feel like it's a very long day traveling, especially when I'm broad and there's nothing that feels better than when you actually arrive at the place and ask them for a sleep and you can finally think that's it, that our job is done. Can you travel with me to the better, don't you? Yeah, yeah, so you can take medication, do you mean giving me a ton on the flight or do you mean like in general, obviously because it's liquid? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you're I think you can take, I think it's up to 100 miles you can take, so I don't know how big the bottles are, but I think if you say it's medication, if you say it's medication, get a letter from the doctor to say that you can travel with it anyway. Right, right, right. If you're flying, you can put that, I think you can put liquids in your. Your carry on, I'll put it in check then luggage as well, so. I'd be in an absolute nightmare if it exploded and you see a case when it's done. Oh, yeah, imagine, just just, just just, smill this. Just to be able to run here on my trip. Speaking of, like, because I remember one of the things that we did when we were travelling, so that's what we would be when Ashton was much, much younger and he was still on a milk and he used to be on the little bottles of formula. Right. And instead of bringing bottles and bottles of it with us, and our case and anything what we would do is we would pay for it and order it for collection at the boots in the airport, so you would collect it once you're through everything. Oh, wow. And then it's obviously your bag's everything away, so it's just a case of, you've just got it in everything, so same with nappies, everything, we would just order it directly to the boots at the airport, and then it just means you've just kind of got it there and there without having to worry about having it kind of crammed into your case and all that sort of stuff. That's actually really smart. Oh, so. That's a top tip. That is a top tip. I'll try to do a top tip once I. Yeah, we've always kind of tried to keep his sleep on, as similar as it was as possible just to try and I think that's quite, quite critical for his kind of mood and things like that as well, so we try and keep that. That's another, not as top a tip as the boots thing, but that would be more kind of. Barry's top tip. Very top tip. Yeah, less top. Yeah, I mean, it seems really the same for Ash, I think it's that way of. It's obviously what depends where you go. It can be able to brighten the mornings and it can still be quite light at night, but his routine has been relatively similar when I brought it, but it is that we have still getting up very early in the morning while everyone is asleep and by the time it gets to midway through the day everyone's sunbathing, you're dying for your beds, that I think. But. Just being a sunbathing, how is he going to sunbathing? He must have thought that was that. But the difficult thing is Ashens always ending out the water, so you're trying to reapply it as quick as possible, but then just jump straight back in the water, so it's so difficult. So you're just trying to apply it as much as you can, but when he's just constantly. He spends nearly all days in the water just wanting to play over and over and he brings all his toys with us. So all of these little toys and it would actually be the full pillow to be full of lots of different characters, paper-pick characters, all of the chopping fruit and everything, everything's in there. So I have my time having to put my hand in the filter, picking out a plateau from a filter and wash the grouch and things and try to pull them out. So all of these toys and we bring them home, they're all just completely different colours. So it's just. Yeah, I think we pretty much bring our full house with us and Ashens just dumps it into the pool. It's just the most of the pool. But yeah, Suncreen wise is difficult just to try and keep up with it when it's just constantly all bit bloody. He's okay with it but it's just something like, you know, these, I don't know, the war constantly. Not as disciplined with it as what he is, so she's going to usually chase him and get them, get them, get them, get them, get me applying stuff like that for images jumping out of the pool two minutes later or whatever. He doesn't like waiting, he doesn't like waiting. He's sort of the sun hat things either with the kind of thing at the back so it's trying to keep him top of him for all that. That will be, not be too difficult for him. Yeah, that would be strong over us. Again, hats for mentioned family agendas. But I mean, Elijah, like in a general sense, doesn't mind having Suncreen on him, obviously because we tell him, hopefully, Suncreen, obviously, things would just kind of moisturise in him. But hats is a no go, which is weird because I constantly, like, used to wear hats all the time, still tend to wear a bean even when he's roasting, probably why I'm losing my hair as much as I am. But yeah, he definitely struggles with to wear hat, like when school calls and says, obviously, like, this is going to be a sunny day and make sure you're packing hat for him, just won't wear it. We've never had to deal with any severe sunburns for him. I've seen that in the occasional, like, a little bit on the arms. Last year, we did Hezz of Air and it was a very, very sunny day and there's no shade there, it's also trying to keep him, like, creamed up. We still got a little bit of a red tinge to his legs and stuff like that. The one good thing, obviously, Elijah lives in shorts when he can do. So, you'd have been living his life, obviously just wearing, like, just running around in a pair of shorts all day. But now I think I've took a lot from today, I'm gleaming that the flight's can't be that bad as long as you've got several people, you're family to kind of bodyguard the whole time on the flight. So traveling in a herd seems to be the best way to do it. You're planning the holiday, your whole family goes, "Oh yeah, I'm getting holiday." We can try and aid. We can try to have a flight for just the listeners, just a full flight of casual additional needs. I send dad chats, community holiday. One or two. It's a soft play on an aeroplane, yeah. That'll be an interesting one. We did get a couple of stories from the dads in the community again, just that we've regards to their sort of antics as it were for flying. So there is a dad that told us he's currently a holiday and with their kids they enjoy doing swimming lessons and one of the things that they do with that is they have the pool noodles. So it turned out that they bought this noodle for their kids and it was put on the back of their younger child's bookie as they were going along to the pool and the younger child took a huge bite out of the noodle as if it was just a beautiful crisp apple and just started chewing and had it away minutes. I'll swap it for you. Reminds me of when I was a kid, I used to go to one of the biggest stories I remember getting told was whenever we went to the shops my parents would buy a french stick and I'd just rip open the top and start chewing away in the middle of the day and by the time they got to the till they'd have to go buy another one because I'd just hauled this huge thing right in the middle of the night. Yeah, it's just taking the stuff. Just put it back on the shelves and put the lid back on. Some things when they're really kids get it from them. One of the other things one of the dads had said that their young lad he is a very particular choice of drink. He only drinks the purple fruit shoot. He says it's a lifestyle this child has. It's not just a person to add to straight. And normally they stockpile these whenever they are preparing for the fruitier puk-lips as he's here to hear. But they came for their first trip abroad and suddenly we're dealing with epilepsy and thought a problem. We'll just bring a few for the journey. Cut to us trying to smuggle three 200 mil bottles for a security in a world where limited to 100 mil bottles absolutely crime criminal masterminds. Can you order a fruit shoot for a collection from from but? I don't know. Potentially. That's got to be an option there. They said the security unsurprisingly were not impressed. They confiscated them except for the one that their child had hidden in his pocket like some sort of capricine outlaw. I think that makes no other drinks here in the story. So now we traumatised slightly dealing with security still and desperate on a mission to find more. We checked all the shops, no black corns, not even a whisper of purple at this point. I'm thinking this might be the holiday cancelled. We were bored in the plane, tensions were high, clutched onto his last fruit shoot like it was oxygen. And they were just about ran out. A miracle, the flight attendant had a purple fruit shoot and that was the grace upon high. That's when you can start a holiday and see if you've got that win. But yeah, I think it is. It just shows us. I feel especially if they're they're kind of main need as liquid based. But I'm sure another thing I'm sure for traveling abroad with casual additional needs. I'm sure that if they do have a particularly restricted diet, you can also get a letter from your doctor to let you have additional luggage to take specific foods with you. So it could be a case of there is only a specific safe food and you have to bring you have to stop peeling and bring a certain amount of that with you. I'm sure that there is a certain thing that you can do to make sure that you can actually bring that in addition to your your allowance because it technically as classed as kind of like medicinal because if that's the only thing that your child can you say again something that they could potentially look into. Thanks a lot. That makes sense. And what we like to do every week on ASN DadChat is give a shout out to one of the services or locations that we have found beneficial for our kids and some of them would recommend for others to try and again we're not affiliated or are linked to any of these places, groups or charities. We're just looking to highlight different places that hopefully your kids can enjoy as well. The one that we're looking to call this week is Glasgow Grovers who are a group of two, Shivon and Male who are a combination of a Macaton tutor and musician and singer. Another yourself. Hello, the Grovers. The two women are absolutely amazing. First time we came across them they were just doing a small little group in a church in the man's and we'd actually turn up like we couldn't find where it was and they just welcomed us in obviously they were so nice to it and we followed them along their journey just going to like when they played little soft plays and they've we've seen them a couple times at sport kids and they're so good with the kids. Even if the kids are just running around they're not listening they're still carrying on their play so professional and they get involved. They learn all the kids names like part of the beginning of the song. Obviously they do the Macaton saying hello as the kids do whatever kids name and they go for all the kids out there and they get involved in obviously people's lives and they get to know you so I was like yeah Shivon and Male are absolutely brilliant. I think they're you'll be hard to find another two kind of more welcome people to have your kids in there. It's not just the kids that they make feel welcome. It's the adults as well to make sure there's no anxiety there. They're brilliant and in terms of Ashton he absolutely loves it. He's learned from it. He loves to copy the signs that Shivon does. You can't get away from from Miles Gattar as well. They're absolutely brilliant and they do play in very different things. We're just keeping eye on their social media but I know that they do have a concert coming up on the 9th of May so definitely one that you should be checking out. Absolutely they are a hot commodity in that sort of scenario so make sure if you are wide see them you're getting your tickets. I've never been able to ask you to use a grievous thing I told but I've heard nothing but good things so I'll check them out on the 8th of May. Perfect. Okay so I think what we'll do is we'll bring another successful episode to close. Thank you to everyone watching and we will talk to you on episode 9. Thank you. Thank you. See you later. Thanks for listening. If you want to get involved or get in touch with us you can find us on Facebook or Instagram under ESN.Chap.