There was a time when going away wasn’t an option. I don’t mean we couldn’t afford it or couldn’t find the time. I mean Kya wouldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it. A different bed, a different room, different sounds, different smells – everything that makes a holiday exciting for most people made it unbearable for her.
We tried once, early on. A cottage by the sea. Lovely place. Five minutes through the door and Kya was in meltdown. Not a tantrum – a full sensory shutdown. She didn’t know where she was. Nothing was familiar. The furniture was wrong, the light was wrong, the bed was wrong, the air was wrong. She stood in the middle of the living room, shaking, and we spent the next two hours trying to bring her back to a place that felt safe. That place was the car. We nearly drove home that night.
A lot of parents would have stopped there. And honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed us. But Sarah and I looked at each other and made a decision: we weren’t going to let the world shrink. Not for us and not for Kya. We just had to find a different way in.
So we persevered. Not by forcing it – by building it. One step at a time. First, we tried a night away somewhere close. Somewhere we could get home in twenty minutes if we needed to. We brought her duvet, her pillow, her gym ball, her tablet loaded with the same cartoons. We made the strange room as un-strange as possible. She didn’t sleep much. Neither did we. But she made it through the night.
The second time was easier. The third was easier again. Each trip, her window got a little wider. She started to understand: we go somewhere different, we bring our things, we come home afterwards. The pattern became predictable, even if the place wasn’t. And for Kya, predictable is everything.
Now we go away at least three times a year. I still can’t quite believe I’m writing that.
Brixham was our first proper win. A little fishing town in Devon with coloured houses and boats and fish and chips on the harbour. Kya loved it. Not for the scenery or the ice cream – for the routine we built around it. Walk to the harbour. Sit on the same bench. Watch the boats. Fish and chips from the same place. Back to the cottage. Gym ball. Bed. She had it figured out by day two, and after that she was settled. Properly settled. We’ve been back three times.
Paignton Zoo was a revelation. We’d been nervous about it – crowds, noise, unpredictable animals. But Kya was fascinated. She stood at the giraffe enclosure for forty minutes, completely still, watching one giraffe moving slowly across the paddock, lowering its long neck with quiet, unhurried grace. I think she liked the gentleness of it. The way it didn’t rush. The way it could see everything from up high but didn’t need to react to it all. It wasn’t rushing around. It was just existing in its own steady rhythm. She could relate.
Plymouth Aquarium was similar. Dark rooms, quiet hum of the tanks, fish moving slowly behind glass. It’s basically a sensory room that charges you admission. Kya pressed her face against the glass and watched the jellyfish for so long that a member of staff came over to check we were alright. We were more than alright. We were having the best Tuesday of our lives.
We didn’t wait for Kya to be “ready” for the world. We found the bits of the world that were ready for her.
The Lake District was the big one. A proper trip – hours in the car, a week in a cottage, a whole new part of the country. Everything about it should have been difficult. But by then, Kya had her travel toolkit. Her tablet, her headphones, her blanket, her snacks. The National Trust pit stops along the way. And a routine that kicked in the moment we arrived: unpack, find the gym ball spot, check the rooms, choose a bed. Once she’d done her sweep of the cottage, she was fine. More than fine. She stood at the edge of a lake, arms out, wind in her face, and she did that thing where she closes her eyes and just breathes. I don’t know if she knew how beautiful the view was. But she felt it. I’m sure of that.
We even went abroad. Actual abroad. Passports, airports, a plane, foreign sun. The kind of trip that three years earlier would have been unthinkable. I’m not going to pretend it was easy – the airport was hard, the flight was hard, the first evening in a new country was hard. But we had our systems. We had our toolkit. And Kya, in her own quiet, stubborn, brilliant way, handled it. She sat by the pool on the first morning, bouncing gently on her toes, flapping in the warm air, and I thought: we’re here. We actually made it here.
The thing I want other parents to hear is this: it might not work the first time. It probably won’t. The first trip might end in tears – yours and theirs. But the second one will be better. And the third one better again. Because every time you try, you’re building a framework. You’re teaching your child that new places can be safe, that different doesn’t always mean dangerous, and that the world has things in it worth seeing – even if you need a gym ball and a familiar duvet to see them.
Kya will never be someone who goes with the flow. She’ll never throw a bag in the car and see where the road takes her. But she goes places now. Real places. Far places. Places we once thought were impossible. And every single time, she comes home a little more sure of herself, a little more sure of us, and a little more sure that the world isn’t as scary as it once seemed.
We’ve got more trips planned. Bigger ones. Further ones. I’ll tell you about those when we get there. But for now – for a family that once nearly drove home from a cottage after five minutes – I think we’re doing alright.
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