Thinking about booking your next family holiday? Nervous? This is our story and why we now look forward to holidays…..
On thinking about booking a holiday we used to look for beautiful sandy beaches, sunshine, impromptu activities, chilling with a glass of wine and the thrill of staying somewhere new and exciting, culture, bustling cafes filled with atmosphere and a real buzz…..this is definitely what we used to look for but to be honest it’s my little boys idea of hell..
Now our idea of a holiday it is very different, that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy them we definitely do, but we have definitely learnt through trial and error what works and what doesn’t. We definitely incorporate some of the things we used to enjoy but in very different ways.
Since having children, our holidays have changed quite considerably anyway we have tried holidays abroad, holiday cottages in this country along with camping. We have had some real disasters where my little boy only settled on the 6th day of a seven day holiday, where he has been so traumatised by an extractor fan in a holiday cottage in Wales that we can’t even mention the country! The older he gets the more fixiated on routine he is getting and the less flexible he is getting with change.
After a series of stressful holidays where we needed a holiday when we got home, we took the plunge, after someone suggested it, and invested in…. a caravan.
We bought our caravan off ebay for under a £1000, we didn’t want to spend too much money as we had no idea if it would work for us as a family. We named her Dotty….
Dotty arrived home and we popped her outside the house. My little boy was intrigued which was a good start! We took about cleaning and pottering and getting it all ready for our first trip, we filled it with familiar things and talked about the fact we may in the future go on holiday in Dotty.
So after a little while had passed we booked our first trip….we chose a campsite 20 minutes away from home so if it all went wrong we could get home quickly!
So as you can imagine the first trip was like any new environment, difficult and unpredictable but after the two days he started to settle..he liked the simplicity of the caravan. No extractor fan in the caravan loo, so it was quiet, his bedding from home made it feel almost normal, familiar and familiar is definitely a good thing!
We started going to a campsite at Woolacombe in Devon. We all as a family loved it, something for everyone. We realised the more we went the calmer he got and having a familiar base to come back to made a huge difference. My little boy sees Dotty like our second home now and connects very little anxiety to it.
We have learned lots over the couple of years we have had Dotty and this is what works for us…
1. We put Dotty outside our house a couple of days before we set off and potter in and out. We have our little ‘tea breaks’ in there, the kids love it although the neighbours must thing we are a little odd!
2. We put as much familiar stuff in the caravan as possible. ‘Garry’ the fan always comes with us along with his sensory lights to make it feel as ‘like home’ as possible.
3. We take the exact same food that we eat at home. We have a fridge and tiny freezer and a halogen oven so we can cook all the favourites! We also take his favourite sectioned plate and cutlery, the beaker he likes and of course the Tomato Ketchup!
4. We try and book the same or a similar pitch, the more we can keep the same the less processing he needs to do 🙂 The other reason is ‘our’ normal pitch has a cracking view which brings me onto my next point…
5. Location- The reason I like our usual pitch is that we can sit outside the caravan once the kids are in bed, enjoy the sunset with a glass of wine and some olives and really relax…..well obviously for the ten minutes before one of them needs a wee/the world putting to rights!
6. Facilities – We like to choose a campsite with an outdoor pool. Indoor pools are full of echo, fans, heating systems and are usually much busier…We quite often will be outside in the outdoor pool just us, as it is spitting with rain but my little boy loves it and it’s great Proprioceptive input.
7. Talking of proprioception- We still try and get lots of proprioceptive activities in while away. It’s easy to melt into a more seditory pace of life but that usually ends in meltdown for us all! So we do a mixture of working our bodies and relaxing. The following are some of our faves…
- Get the kids to undo the zips to the awning.
- Getting the water in the barrels and rolling them.
- Visit the park
- Swimming
- Pulling tent pegs out/hammering in
- Getting out on the bikes
- Blowing bubbles in a cup of water with a straw.
8. We take the baby monitors. We have video monitors so even though we are literally outside the caravan door we can look and see what the kids are doing without us going in and the bedtime ‘obsessions with how the world works’ starts again.
9. We allow chill time. It’s easy, as holidays go so quickly, to try and cram alot into everyday but that is alot to process. We usually plan one outing a day usually in the morning when we are all fresh and then do something more familiar in the afternoon. We usually at this time occasionally take the opportunity to have some time to do what we as adults enjoy aswell. My husband will go off surfing if the surf is good and another afternoon I will usually potter around the shops in peace. We usually come back feeling fresh and ready to jump back head first with the kids to the relief of the parent that was left juggling!
10. We try and plan what we are doing so we can pre warn as to what may be a potential worry. Things like microphones at the children’s entertainment and we give a solution/alternative if it gets too much in advance so this hopefully means that at least part of the time we are prepared if there is a wobble.
We really look forward to holidays now. My husband and I have been lucky in the past to have travelled the world, but I truly have never been happier sat in my camping chair looking at ‘mummies view’ overlooking the beautiful Woolacombe beach. The gentle whir of Garry the fan coming from the awning teamed with twinkling sensory lights and the familiar sound of my husband reading ‘Peppa Pig goes on holiday’ to my little girl for the millionth time. This is our life now and I couldn’t be happier 🙂
Anna Grey 