We LOVE Fan Friday here at Disney Guru because it is a great way to feature you as a Disney Guru. Today Lauren Riddle shares a veyr touching story with us. Thank you Lauren!!
Explaining to a special needs child when you are going to travel is a hard thing to do. With my little sister, who is almost four years old now, we would talk to her a week before any Disney trip. One thing that I do remember doing with her for our most recent trip to Disney World, (which was in September of 2011) is to familiarize her with the Disney Characters. Surprisingly, she already knew a lot of them! Cinderella is her favorite princess, so we would watch her movie, and listen to her music.
The way that we prepare for travel is, we always make sure we have her favorite things packed in a carry on. For example, she loves her “sucker” or pacifier; we definitely make sure we have that. When she gets nervous, she wants to rub her fingers with something, so we have made her a blanket that we called her “purple”, and it had the ends cut off to look frilly. This was another “comfort” from home. We would also pack her favorite stuffed animal and blanket.
Anytime she would get overwhelmed in the parks, my mother would lay her back in her stroller for a few minutes, and let her have her sucker and purple, and that would calm her down right away, and she was ready to go play!
It is always very important to rest during the day, no matter how old the child is! My sister is one that requires a tremendous amount of sleep. So, one thing that our family would do is, we would leave for the parks around 10 o’clock in the morning, play for a while, eat lunch, head back to the resort, and rest! You do want to prevent meltdowns in the park and the biggest cause of meltdowns in autistic children is being overly tired.
The baby care centers are fabulous! I cannot get enough of them! Before we would even go into the park, my mother and I would map out the entire baby care centers that they have in each park, and would mark them down in our maps! The one by Casey’s Corner, we used several different times during our “Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party” in 2011. They were fabulous nurses! They would call her princess, and make her feel much better! My little sister got overwhelmed, and had a little too much juice, and by the end of one night, she got sick several times, and my mother would take her to the baby care center, the second time my little sister got sick, the nurses gave her a free outfit! The nurses would help my mother clean her up, and even the covers to the stroller up! We were so amazed! Even this little experience made our trip magical; we will never forget the nurses in the baby care center!
2 Comments.
Very good article!
Very good article. I loved it!!